All Stitched up
by rhylith
Summary: You're blue, fluffy, cute and in the worm verse. Good luck! Self-insert
1. Chapter 1

Pop-up window...and a stupid video ad... ugh, I thought I had AdBlocker on.

Clicking the close button just maximized it, it had to be a drive by JavaScript worm.

Oh, it's an Old Spice commercial - it must be a new one, I haven't seen any of those in years.

"Hello men, do you wish to look like me?

You might be able to look like me if you smelled like me, look left now look back at me, where am I?

I'm floating in space having an adventure with hot alien ladies like you could be if you smelled like me.

The new "Old Spice Adventure Scent" cologne could be your ticket to excitement.

Look right now look back at me, I'm a superhero battling monsters and saving the day like you could be if you smelled like me.

Click **yes** to be sprayed with adventure!"

I couldn't help as a bit of a chuckle escaped my lips after the screen turned into a giant Yes button.

Rolling my eyes, I clicked yes to infect my computer with whatever virus the JavaScript had already installed and shifted my fingers over onto the ctrl-alt-del keys to close the browser window the hard way. Before starting the disinfection process.

I was suddenly knocked back as a firehose worth of scented liquid gushed from my screen and drove me painfully into a brick wall behind me, blacking out instantly from the impact.

 **Chapter one**

I woke up sopping wet on my back staring upwards at the night sky and reeking strongly of some Old Spice blend. Less intense foul scents crept into my nose, smelling of old stale urine and rotting garbage nearby. Still a bit dazed from the collision I stared upwards a bit up at the clear night sky. Surprisingly I had no aches or pains from my unpleasant and unexpected trip into a brick wall that hadn't been there this morning.

Feeling intensely nauseous I rolled over onto my side and heaved up the scented liquid that I had apparently swallowed onto a few pieces of washed out and soaked paper stuck to the grimy alley floor. Sucking in the air like a drowning victim I almost choked when I saw my blue, clawed, furry hand.

 _Perfectly normal_

I flexed it and the other three a few times before wondering why I was startled by it.

Shifting onto my feet, I grimaced a bit at the visible indent my body had left in the old brickwork of the building behind me. The opposite wall was dirty and old but otherwise undamaged brick, giving me no clue how I got here other than the memory of being blasted by the Old Spice man into a brick wall.

I briefly wondered if that had destroyed my laptop or damaged the interior wall behind me. Not going to get that security deposit back with cologne soaking into the wood flooring. I could do the actual repair work on the wall myself, having worked in various constructions jobs before.

I leaned against an undamaged portion of the brick wall, wriggling my small toes and running all four hands down my sides to help shake off the brick dust which was quickly turning into a mud out of my short wet fur. Checking around for other people briefly, I went ahead and shook like a dog to get most of the cologne out.

Still something seemed off, but I'm not sure what it could be. The alley seemed much larger than it should be like the perspective was off somehow.

Come to think of it, it's nighttime and the alley isn't lit by any lights but that doesn't seem to have any negative impact on my ability to see.

Was my night vision this good before?

 _Oh bliznak_ , where are my glasses?

I quickly searched around for them for a few seconds before realizing that I didn't seem to need them. I could have sworn I had some really bad vision, I shouldn't have been able to see my hand clearly when outstretched much less the alleyway or even the bricks around me.

Come to think of it, where the hell am I, maybe I should check my phone. I patted my furry sides and then my rear

Oh, Bliznak my wallet and smartphone are gone. I could have sworn I had them in my pocket.

 _Wait where are my pants?_

Why would I wear pants?

 _I usually wear pants!_

Did the Old Spice man strip me _naked?_

No, why would he do that, _I'm covered in fur so why would I bother with pants?_

I sagged in pain from a massive headache that seemed to slam into my head, my thoughts racing around in circles. I slapped myself across the face to distract myself, which somehow instantly banished the headache as well.

"Ok, ok calm down. Let's take this step by step."

"I was..." I gritted my teeth in the sudden recurring headache.

"Sitting at my computer, surfing the internet after getting home from work. I'm a system administrator who works in a datacenter, I usually wear a light jacket everywhere because it's cold and windy in the datacenter."

I grabbed my head as the pain increased, my memories were harder to reach as the pain caused my head to throb with every heartbeat. It felt like my head was fighting me, trying to stop me from reaching memories exclusively about myself.

Gritting my teeth I spat out angrily in defiance of the pain, "I was wearing pants and clothing and a belt. I wear clothing because everyone wears clothing."

The pain became blinding, and my vision swam as I struggled to continue with the train of thought. "I wear clothing because..." I stumbled into the wall as my knees gave out and grabbed the wall with my hands, digging my claws into the mortar joints.

" **I"** I slammed my head into the brick wall

" **Didn't"** again

" **Have"** and again

" **Fur"** I slammed my head into and through the wall and into the other building, which was thankfully empty. I pulled my head out quickly, some of the bricks collapsing to partially fill in the hole I made.

I sagged a bit in relief as the headache left me just as suddenly as it came and collapsed onto the ground on my back staring upward at the night sky, panting loudly for a few minutes as I rested. I reached up at nothing with all four arms, clenching the clawed hands at the sky as if seeing them for the first time.

The hands seemed so familiar and "right" but I know now that they were new. I could use them as if they had always been a part of me, but it didn't take much of a jump in logic to assume my entire body had been changed alongside the addition of fur.

It was extremely difficult to focus on what my body "used" to be and only resulted in a quickly increasing headache.

"Na La Queesta Old Spice Man!" I cursed, shaking both right fists upwards at the empty air.

A nearly blinding flash of light lit up the dark alley as the sound of a generic digital camera going off suddenly echoed off of the brick walls.

Lifting my ears upward, I quickly spun towards the sound, some Asian guy at the entrance to the alleyway with his phone out and an "Oh shit" expression plastered over his face.

"Hey, oh is that a phone can I borrow it?" I asked him sweetly, flashing a friendly smile and pointing at his phone.

He looked like he was about to drop his cellphone and muttered "Tā shuōhuà! Zhèyàng, rú fēnglì de yáchǐ.." backing up a bit away from me.

(Holy shit, the little demon is talking..)

I grinned and motioned at his phone, pointing at it with a claw with one hand and making grasping motions with the lower one for him to bring it over to me.

"Come on just give me the phone Asian guy... I just need to make a few calls on it."

He shook his head no.

"Just give me the Bliznak phone!"

I shook my head no, then I made strangling motions with my own neck with my upper arms and pointed at myself with one lower arm and then at my upper arms and him with the other and then my at my "being strangled" neck and then pointed at his phone and make a give-it-to-me grasping motion with the other hand.

He didn't like that and screamed out "Bāngzhù, yěshòu huì chī wǒ!" before running away.

(The little demon is going to kill me!)

Bliznak

I ran towards the entrance of the alleyway and looked around, only for about a dozen people to look back at me and then at the screaming running man.

I smiled at them and waved, only for some of the women to shriek at me and duck behind a few men.

A few of the men decided to make threatening noises and started saying things in more Asian-sounding languages a few of them chucked a few pieces of garbage at me while some non-shrieking women pulled out their cellphones.

I pulled back into the alleyway and slouched against the wall. Great, so I'm a six-limbed blue-furred creature in some Asian country and people are already calling the police on me.

Fantastic, Bata Naba Gata Old Spice man. Just fantastic.

I really needed to get out of here before the police show up and decide to add a few holes to me or some knife-wielding cook decides it might be a good idea to see how I taste in a soup. Looking around, it's obvious I'm trapped, it's a small boxed-in alleyway with the only exit being the street-one.

And the entrance now has a couple of the adventurous men who are now armed with random easily grabbed objects like sticks and brooms.

"Huòqǔ yāo!" one of them cried as they ran towards me.

(Kill the demon!)

I quickly backed up into the end of the alleyway

"Keep away from me!" I shouted at them

They briefly paused and looked at each other before one of them seemed to take charge and shouted, "Shā sǐ wàiguó èmó." and waved his steel pipe in the air. The others seemed to agree with the sentiment and warily pointed their makeshift weapons at me with their faces scrunched up in expressions of anger.

(Come on, it's just a weak demon!)

I pressed my back against the brickwork and all four hands against the wall, pushing upwards to try and get away from them. Which seemed to work fantastically as I was suddenly eye-level with most of them. Not really understanding I just continued backpedaling upwards and away from them.

One of them shouted out "Xiǎo èmó shì táopǎo!"

(It's getting away)

I rushed up the brick wall backwards at an impressive speed and quickly made it up to the roof. The angry crowd below took to grabbing small pieces of garbage and tried lobbing them at me with hilariously bad aim.

The "leader" said "Diàoyòng Yàngbǎn"

(Call the Yangban)

I stood on the edge of the rooftop and mocked them, immature I know but I was just so relieved at my narrow escape that I couldn't help sticking my tongue out at them and blowing raspberries. Culminating in me mooning them and patting my rear with a lower hand before a thrown shoe hit me and threw me further onto the rooftop and away from the edge.

I took that as a signal to stop. I looked over the sprawling city from the rooftop, trying to find an airport or something that might hint at a location or a way out of this Asian city. Hmm, a couple of those pagoda style buildings off in the distance, I think they're Chinese... or Japanese... Bliznak! Do Koreans have those too?

 _I don't know much about Asian cultures!_


	2. Chapter 2

"Wǒmen yǐjīng huòdé wàiguó èmó gōngjí rén jìn xīn zhá lù 1340 lóng 10 hào bàogào" reported a man on the console in army-fatigues.

(We have reports of an abomination terrorizing citizens at 1340 lóng 10th Housing development area)

"Wǒ huì zhàogù tā" said the man known as Twelve.

(I'll take care of it, it's my duty/shift)

"Yàngbǎn qiáng!" shouted the nighttime monitoring group.

(Yangban Strong!)

"Yàngbǎn qiáng!" replied Twelve enthusiastically.

(Yangban Strong!)

"Qiān chū." Ten ordered.

(Go now)

Yàngbǎn qiáng!" Twelve shouted by himself as he flew off to take care of the problem.

(Yangban Strong!)

* * *

The skyline remained unfamiliar, there was a river nearby and I thought I could see an airport off in the distance, a plane appeared to be taking off from it. I think that would be the best place to go, hop on any of the major English-airline airplanes and it should eventually take me into an English speaking country.

Bliznak, looking over the city from the rooftop filled my nose with the scents of a thousand things, a few of them food-scents of exotic dishes and rice, fish, fish sauces and vegetable based dishes. It set my stomach rumbling with hunger.

I also had a low simmering desire to clog up the sewer system. Heh, that seems like such a great idea just hit the side of the sewer system and collapse the tunnel and watch Bliznak come flowing out of people's houses. Hehehe then maybe start switching up the street signs and watch people run around confused…

No! I need to get out of here if this is China...

Well the place isn't exactly known for its human rights or animal rights and I'm definitely not human.

Who knows what they'd do to me if they caught me, experimentation, vivisection or maybe just kill me and turn me into a fur lining for some fancy coat.

Probably nothing good, Japan has some of the same issues with animals being treated like bliznak for the most part.

It doesn't matter either way. I don't really want to be in either country, best to get back home to the United States.

A dark speck in the sky growing in size caught the little creature's attention as it watched it in the night sky.

"Is that a drone or something?" it asked the empty rooftop only to answer it's own question as it's eyes zoomed in on the small figure heading towards it. "Oh, bliznak a flying superhero!"

It waved and jumped up and down on the rooftop to try and catch the hero's attention

"Nàme nǐ yīdìng kěyǐ qīngsōng zhǎodào nǐ," said Twelve as he flew over and touched down near the blue furry creature.

(Well you certainly made it easy to find you.)

"I don't know what any of that was but I definitely need some help, preferably need to get a ride back to the United States."

It mimicked the sound of a jet airplane and with one of it's topmost hands made it look vaguely like a plane taking off from another serving as the ground. "United States of America" the creature intoned slowly and clearly.

The flying man frowned and said "Mújù, duìwài yāo!" as he slid into one of the martial-arts like poses to unleash the thirty-second path. A bright beam of light rocked out of his hand and struck the blue creature in the head sending it flying backward through the air and onto the next buildings rooftop.

(Die peacefully demon!(with no regrets))

The creature skidded along the rooftop, coming to a stop as it impacted a roof mounted AC unit and put a dent in it. Unfazed it stood up and shouted back at the slightly stunned Asian superhero.

Twelve couldn't believe it, the creature just shrugged off the thirty-first path's deadly cutting lasers to the head and was just tossed back from it's impact.

"Bata Naba Gata, Acha Booka Moopa!" It shouted angrily and without thinking about it, grabbed the large rooftop AC unit behind it, it's claws sunk deep into the galvanized metal before it awkwardly lifted the unit and flung the car-sized chunk of metal directly at the Asian cape.

(Your A (Destroyer) aren't you, Was that The Best You Can Throw At Me?)

Twelve switched instantly to the thirteenth path, third form and a large force field sprung up in front of him before the AC unit plowed into it and swept him off of the roof and into the building across the street behind it. The weight of the AC unit causing it to arc downwards before it impacted the other building on it's bottom floor and stuck out of it.

The blue creature looked horrified and rushed over to the other building, leaping from one roof to another, easily jumping the large gaps in between the buildings while it said, "Oh bliznak!, Oh bliznak! Don't be dead Asian superman guy, don't be dead."

Bouncing slightly on the street from the three-story drop he rushed over to the AC unit. Grabbing it he walked backward, lifting it off the Asian cape embedded in the building behind it and tossed the AC unit to the side.

The Asian superhero immediately rushed into the blue creature while it was distracted with his knee pointed at its head, nailing it and flinging it into the building across from them. The creature's body plowed through the wall and disappeared deep into the structure. He quickly followed up with the beam from earlier, first aiming it directly in the hole the creature's body made in the structure, then swung the beam back and forth. The white beam cut through the building's brick and steel structure and then collapsed the building on top of it.

Only for the rubble of the building to shift seconds later and then explode outwards as two sets of clawed hands ripped through the collapsed steel roof with ludicrous ease. The blue creature was covered in dust and a trickle of pink fluid dripped out of the corner of it's an eye on the Asian man, it looked around briefly in the wreckage and chuckled softly.

"Oh, I see. You've been trying to questa me you toobaga" It's voice cackled slightly before it screeched out, "Chu Gata Asian Superman Meega Questa!" as it leaned down, grasping the torn edges of the roof it had gone through earlier and picked up the collapsed building's entire steel roof. The roof screeched in protest as parts of it bent and broke off as it lifted the roof and flung it at Twelve.

With the Thirteenth's path defensive force fields having been shattered by the force of the AC unit from before. Twelve tried something else and switched to using his own power. Twelve jumped towards the roof and space itself warped around him as he turned into a human shaped bullet and tore through the flying metal structure as if it wasn't there. Canceling the directionally-fixed power he dropped down onto the street as the building behind him crumpled as the rest of the thrown roof plowed into it.

Twelve couldn't believe the strength of the tiny creature, the little foreign demon's strength was almost on the level of the famous Alexandria herself. With such strength, he briefly wondered if he should kill it or try to capture it and then integrate it into the Yangbang. Standing orders were to kill any abominations once found. But this one's incredibly high strength and resilience might be worth the problems it might cause.

Best not to risk it, directly violating orders was always a very unpleasant experience if not a fatal one. The power-sharing power of zero might not work on demons anyways.

Twelve flung out a series of cutting blasts while the little creature dodged amongst the rubble, flinging bricks and ruined junk from the wreckage around it in return. The smaller objects buzzed threateningly in the air as they passed him at incredible speeds. The obvious danger of the projectiles forced him to switch to his spacial warp form frequently and use the twenty-third path's enhanced reflexes multiple times as he closed in on the creature.

It suddenly leaped out of the rubble and ran over to a street lamp pole and casually tore it off of it's concrete base. Seemingly waiting for a few seconds as Twelve chased him onto the street, before throwing the street lamp vertically at an angle at Twelve.

Twelve simply jumped toward it slightly and converted back to his unstoppable human bullet form to plow through the bottom of the narrow pole and switched out of it after the bottom of it was sheared off to send another cutting laser blast at the creature who foolishly stood still after throwing the street lamp. The light pole suddenly reappeared in his vision as it swung down from above and cracked several of his ribs as it batted him away.

The light pole clattered to the ground as it fell off of the overhead lines that it's hooked light had caught and swung around on.

Twelve stood up shakily as his ribs screamed at him with every breath and looked around the battlefield for the creature. Not spotting it he pulled out his own phone and made a call to base to report his shameful failure and his need of further assistance.

* * *

Ugh, toobaga Asian superman, making me enter these horrific smelling sewers. My nose felt like it was trying to turn itself inside out and fall off of my face.

Bliznak everywhere, the scents were an indescribably bad mix of rotting foods, bliznak, chemicals from factories and random debris, I think they have some sort of toobaga combined sewer/storm drain system. I skittered along the ceiling of the sewers, for the most part, thankfully the ceiling wasn't so bad other than having to deal with the cockroaches clinging to it. I kept moving towards the airport with all six limbs clinging to the ceiling, occasionally popping up out of a sewer grate in a quiet area to check on my progress.

A worryingly growing population of other flying Asian superhero's was apparently gathering back from where we had been fighting. Choota, trying to kill me off the bat. That laser blast he hit me with in the head was obviously meant to kill me!

Queesta him.. Queesta this whole city!

Meega Nala Questa!

I also decided to start marking my path through the city, slicing up the disgusting ceiling of the sewer with my claws to see where I've been as I went through a junction. Severing the gas lines running through the sewer systems, I mean really who runs gas lines through a sewer that's a just a safety hazard. Something might just come along and break the gas lines and let the gas build up until something sparks it and turns the entire sewer system into a horrifically large explosion.

Something just like me.

Portions of the sewer system collapsed behind me to make sure I don't go that way again, and helpfully plugging up portions of the sewer for the gas to build up in. I mean, marking your path with collapsed portions of the sewer is just common sense right?

Some sections of the sewer were particularly vile, clogged with grease and floating things I don't want to think about.

A mile or so and several hours of careful traveling away from the flying supermen in the sky, I popped out of the sewers in a nice high-end residential area. Keeping to the shadows and down on all my limbs like a dog, I rushed around on the surface looking for a currently unoccupied building.

Oh, wait a pool.

A quick dip in some rich-guys pool just to get rid of most of the dirt and "unmentionable fluids" from the sewer that I had accumulated and I smelled... like chlorine and Old Spice. Unfortunately, the house it was behind looked like it was currently occupied.

A bit later and I found an empty but high-end house. Heading inside, I sought out the shower and gave myself a real scrubbing with copious amounts of shampoo. I toweled off and sniffed at myself. Weird, l still smell like old spice even after a third shower. Guess I sweat Old Spice or something now. Whatever, that isn't important anyways.

The mirror, of course, became my focus, I stood in front of it for quite a while moving around and making faces at myself. Well, I'm "Stitch" the alien experiment from the movies and cartoon shows. I'm not sure how I feel about becoming a real-life version of a cartoon character but at least, I'm cute and fluffy.

Retracting the extra arms, spines, and antenna I look like a really weird koala-dog thing. Posing a bit, I widened my eyes fully and put my hands up into a begging posture. Ok, that's just heartbreakingly adorable. Hmm.. I think he could switch vision modes and.. yep X-ray vision. Guess I was using night-vision automatically or something.

Priorities, maybe I can figure out what city or country I am in, and loot this guy's house for cash while I'm here. He doesn't seem to have a computer or tablet here, lame. Also, grab something to eat I guess.

Oh, is that a safe I see on the wall over there, sorry random fancy-house guy but I'm going to tear that safe apart and rob you.


	3. Chapter 3

China, specifically Shanghai. That's right I've been Shanghaied by the Old Spice guy, the safe contained money with chairman Mao's image on it or at least, I think that's who's on it, but the ID's and passports within were the big hint.

Also, based on the collection of guns and some blatantly illegal drugs that were also inside of the safe I'd say this guy just might be in with the gangs. I didn't want to stick around for much longer, this guy could come back anytime and have friends with him. A couple extra phones were inside but I wasn't sure I wanted to use any of them, obviously, I'm not in my world with murderous "superheroes" running around and so any phone number I dialed would probably not reach the person I wanted. Well at least, I feel less bad about robbing this guy whose name I can't pronounce.

I sucked in my lower arms while clutching the money, using them like a pocket before I headed into the kitchen to grab a bite to eat. Searching through the refrigerator I was somewhat depressed to only find old take-out containers, ingredients, and toppings I didn't recognize.

I guess I should have expected that.

However, a search of the cabinets turned up some instant noodles of some local brand. Finding a pot and using the sink for some water I started boiling my meager meal. Oh, a teapot, tea set, and some tea leaves, awesome.

A few minutes later I had the noodle meal warming my stomach up, at least, it was something. And I "accidentally" broke the knob off of the stove when I tried to turn it off. I blew out the flames and took that as my cue to leave. Leaving the gas on high to build up inside of the gangsters house.

Keeping to the shadows, I made my way to a deserted bus stop and looked at the map.

Some of the major roads had secondary "English" titles at least, "Yan'an Road" looked like it headed straight to the airport. I headed to the nearest intersection with an onramp to the highway and waited until a vehicle stopped. Rushing out, I grabbed onto and clung to the rear bumper of the car and made my way onto the roof, careful to stay out of the driver's field of view.

I had to do a few exciting vehicle-to-vehicle jumps to stay on the right roads while on the highway, and only had one fall. My near-invulnerability laughed at highway speeds and a couple of cars that ran me over. Also, people really didn't want to stop to check to see if I was alright, one glance and they took off, popped tires, broken windshields and the muffler stuck to one of my hands didn't seem to matter.

I really can't blame them, checking to see if the demented looking blue koala-thing with too many sharp teeth is alright and "oh-my-ancestors it's standing up and brushing itself off" is probably fairly high on the "Nope" list. I chucked the muffler off to the side of the highway, spat on the ground to get the highway dirt and rocks out of my mouth and jumped at a passing car's side to continue my ride.

Hanging out on top of a bus which looked like it might be heading to the airport. I got to see a big fireball followed shortly by an even larger explosion. I _wonder_ what happened, It looks like the city is having some issues with gas leaks in the sewers or in houses or something. That should keep those super-people occupied for a while.

What a shame.

Airport, ok... How do I do this... sneaking on via the wheel well or the luggage compartment seemed to be the best choices. I know people freeze to death in the wheel-well but I should be able to cut my way into another part of the plane if it gets too cold. I think the luggage compartment is pressurized so that would probably be a better spot.

Free plane ride, no hassles, don't have to spend my "hard" earned Chinese money and most importantly, no ID or passport needed, which I didn't have anyways. As if I could purchase a ticket anyways, _sigh_. Just need to pick the right plane after getting a good view from the airport building.

It seemed that there were significantly fewer airplanes flying then what I would expect, I thought Shanghai was a major airport but clearly they are not doing well. There seems to be only a single plane taking off or landing every hour or so, shouldn't there be a constant stream of planes?

 _Weird_.

Oh, wait that plane is _perfect_.

* * *

The luggage compartment of the Hawaiian Airlines airplane was nice and cozy. The in-flight meal was lacking but I managed to grab a few hundred American dollars and more Chinese currency from the luggage. Also I entertained myself by watching the skeleton-people walking around and getting seated on the plane via X-Ray vision, after looking through everyone's luggage for money and left shoes for some strange reason.

Well, leaving that mess behind might have been a mistake, the flight wasn't a direct one. Instead we stopped in another Chinese airport, let a few people off... And the baggage handlers freaked out a bit at the ravaged luggage, most of which had been shredded by me to make a comfortable little nest for myself. I mean China to Hawaii, that's a long trip and I planned on sleeping through most of it if possible.

Totally not my fault, best to try again with a different plane, I decided to sneak on with the pets. Sorry dog, I need your kennel to get out of China and survive.

He should be fine, go free dog, go free!

The rumors of eating random dogs off the streets in China have to be exaggerated right? Sucking in my antenna, spines and extra arms and presto an ugly looking blue-koala dog thing.

"Bark Bark" My enthusiasm in my role did not phase the airport attendants in the least as they loaded me onto the plane. Some tongue wagging, tail wagging, fur biting and I totally aced the boarding checks as they stacked me in the back with the handful of other pets.

The backpack and clothing were easily hidden under a blanket and made for additional padding. Another blanket was happily provided by the flight attendant to cover the kennel's front. Apparently staring directly at someone with a toothy grin and gnashing one's teeth is somewhat disturbing. It helps when your mouth is almost two thirds of your head too.

While otherwise bored in flight it was a good time to plan and decide things. The first thing I need to figure out is just where I am, you know which universe etc. Then what I want to do about it, I mean other than getting back into the USA and heading home. See if an alternate version of me exists and just suck my own accounts dry, I can totally "borrow" money from myself right? Heh, grab my other-selfs cash and head back to Hawaii and pretend to be Stitch from an alternate universe who got sucked into this one from an experiment.

That… that actually might work, I'll have to go through the movies and show again to catch the details I might miss.

Show up in Hawaii and intentionally get noticed by tourists and the locals. Make it into a big media event so that I can't be "disappeared" by shady government officials and maybe get hired by Disney.

Wonder if i'm fluent in Stitch's alien language.

I gave it a go "Tookie Bawabah Maqa Maqa Mimichi Bonaba Iki Bobo!" oh well, guess not.

I wonder how long it would take it pick it up from the movies and the show, Stitch managed to pick up tolerable English in just a few days.

* * *

A long and dull ride later, and I'm in Hawaii. Honestly, I debated hopping off and checking it out, but I've been on all of the Caribbean Islands and besides the difference in cultures, one island is pretty much the same as all islands. A quick change of planes to one going to the mainland instead of back to China and a couple of kennel changes and onwards to California. Really the security is terrible behind the scenes, I was expecting a much more intense security screening or at least some locked doors, I guess TSA really is uselessly incompetent.

The dog food was _delicious_ , a crunchy meat flavored cereal but it could have used some milk. One of the flight attendants is now missing a left shoe which mysteriously disappeared after she briefly took them off while taking a break. She deserved it after all of the talk about the "super ugly, freaky looking dog".

Weirdly the low-plane traffic continued, the California airport had the same issue as the previous two. I wonder if it was some sort of low-traffic period, it must be during the workweek or is there some sort of global depression going on here? A direct flight from California to BWI didn't seem to be in the cards, but surprisingly I couldn't find one going to Dulles airport either. I settled for New York City, at least I'd be on the same coast and I know that there are buses from New York to back home.

I thought about just purchasing a plane ticket, I certainly had enough cash after raiding the luggage compartment for hours! Maybe disguise myself with bandages and pretend I'm a dwarf or something. The problem of course is ID, and the fact that everyone will be staring at me. I can just imagine a couple of kids screaming out "Look, it's Stitch" and surrounding me until the adults notice.

Bliznak!

And back to the kennel. I hate these things but at least I can get out of them and stretch when the attendants aren't using the back area to chat and gossip.

* * *

New York, JFK airport. Just breathe in that smoggy air filled with so many unpleasant stinks. With my growing hatred of riding in the back of airplanes, I snuck into the terminal to check out when a plane from BWI or Dulles would be available.

Let's see, Departing schedule. Baltimore 7:25am, Brockton Bay 8:15am, Birmingham at 8:45am .. Dulles at 12:34am

Wait, Brockton Bay? Where have I heard... oh... **Nooonnon** Noo _Oh crap_! **Oh crap!**

I almost fell off of the ceiling inside the airport that I was clinging to, for the love of… I'm in **that** _death-trap_ of a world!

I snuck up into the ceiling onto a girder where I could freak out nice and quietly. Clutching the steel-ceiling-girders until they slowly squashed under my hands.

Why... why this shit-hole of a universe? Bliznak Old Spice Man, this isn't fair. This is like a guaranteed death-world where a huge portion of the world - and worlds connected to it - die from _whiny space-whale angst_!

That is, if any of the Endbringers or the S9 or any of the other horrors don't get to you first!

I've only read it once, months ago, so I don't even remember half of the crap that goes on!

Come on, give me a break Old Spice man! You turned me into Stitch and then stuck me into this you're-going-to-die death-world, how is that even fair?

"Meega Bliznak"

Well, I could run away and avoid everything and everyone, and end up dead via Scion at some point, or an Endbringer if I don't avoid the cities entirely, or get snatched up by Khepri... Alternatively, I could head to Brockton Bay, interfere, and hope for a better ending.

 **Sigh**

Guess, I should find out the date first, I know a very rough timeline of events. The story starts in fall/winter of 2011 I think with Taylor's debut with Lung. Leviathan a month later, the S9 after that. Then Coil is dealt with I think, then the travelers and the info about the case fifty three's breaks out. The Undersiders take over the city and the heroes escalate, Taylor is outed and turns herself in, offs Alexandria and becomes Weaver. The Behemoth's last battle/murder after a time skip I think, more time skips and the S9000 happens, and Jack somehow gets in contact with Scion and convinces him to go on a _murder-everyone-alive_ rampage.

Well, I guess there is one benefit to this world, case fifty threes are around so the likelihood of being captured for experimentation is fairly low. I think I should go grab some clothing to be a bit more presentable and to help define me as being sentient and not some sort of _freakish animal_. A quick trip to the luggage area and a few destroyed locks and I had a reasonable outfit of some kid-sized clothing. I tore holes under my upper arms with my claws. Less likely to be confused for a weird dog with all four arms sticking out.

I stuffed the cash into the pants pockets.

I've decided that I'm taking a bus next. Even though it'll be twice the time as another airplane ride. Bus rides can be purchased without ID's I think, I'm just tired of cramped cages and I want an actual seat. I also want more time to think about what I want to do. I made my way to an area without anyone watching and dropped down to the ground.

I swear I could feel everyone staring at me as I walked out of the airport openly and headed to the taxis. I just wanted a quick ride to the bus terminal, maybe I should have tried finding a hat to stuff my ears into.

Getting a taxi was not a very pleasant experience, quite a few of them refused to take me. Is that speciesism or racism?

The taxi driver who did take me almost had his tires slashed after asking for a bigger tip for "Vacuuming up your fur" I "dropped" a twenty, rolled under his car to "retrieve it" and _put a claw-sized hole_ in his gas tank before giving it to him. I hope he likes that tip.

I smiled and waved goodbye, "Toobaga!" I said cheerfully he just looked at me funny and drove away. I grinned at the little trail of gasoline following him before heading into the bus terminal.

Only about half the bus terminal watched as I got a bus ticket from the attendant, a few of the people visibly recoiled and quickly left. I'm so glad I stole that money from those tourists. It's a shame that I had to probably ruin their vacation, but getting the hell out of China was a higher priority. Also, according to a newspaper left on a seat, it's apparently August 2010. Unfortunately, I don't know about anything before the start of the story other than Taylor's locker-event happening several months before the story started.

Vending machine food is slightly better than dog food, but not by much honestly. The fact that nearly everyone was staring at me freaked me out, though. I was never comfortable being the center of attention and now I felt like everyone was watching me as I ate the vending machine sandwich and sat down to wait for the bus.


	4. Chapter 4

The "blue dog-koala thing in kid-sized shirt and pants that smells good" is apparently less threatening than the obviously drunk homeless guy who bliznaks his pants halfway through the bus ride and tries to make drooling nonsensical conversation with a young lady who promptly joined me. I went ahead and moved to the aisle seat while she took the window seat and got a thankful smile from her. A good loud sharp-tooth filled growl and the crazy guy stopped trying to interact with her.

Before the bus even pulled out I started missing New York City, I've always liked visiting it when I was back in my world. Wonder how this one was different with heroes like Legend running around it and having had the city hit by two endbringers. Bet the traffic is much better, but sightseeing is probably too dangerous to do right now, need to settle in somewhere and get my affairs in order first.

The bus ride did give me time to think, I needed ID, food and shelter. I could pretend to be a case fifty-three with some amnesia but had vague memories of Brockton Bay, which is why when I "appeared" in NYC I took a bus here. In hindsight the taxi driver thing was a terrible decision, I bet he remembers picking me up from the airport and the fact that he gained a hole in his gas tank. I should have walked through the sewers again and avoided everyone, but to be fair after almost an entire day of being trapped in plane-rides, I was just getting tired of traveling.

Option one: Join the wards or the Protectorate. Pretend I'm sixteen or seventeen, basically exchange a year or two of going to school (a second time) until the start of canon. The story starts and I'm eighteen, eligible for the protectorate if I want to do that or I can just tell them to shove off and leave if I decide I need to.

I think I would rate as a mid or upper-tier brute with a dozen minor additional powers. I'm not exactly eager to go toe-to-toe with supervillains and I'll happily put off fighting gangbangers, villains, and endbringers as long as possible. As a case fifty-three, I could probably swing free room and board and live "on base", get a paycheck that gets deposited into a trust fund or a savings account. The biggest negative would probably be being assigned a guardian to act as a parent. Oh and school, boring teen drama-laden school.

Or go to the Protectorate which would be the adult version with higher pay grade and I can do whatever I want with the money. Unfortunately, it would be a career, and I'd have to patrol the dangerous areas of Brockton Bay as a full-time job. I think Endbringer fights are optional with hazard pay bonus and additional benefits, but I'm pretty sure that they greatly "encourage" the Protectorate members to go. With just this bodies powers I'm fairly certain that would only result in either being drowned by Levi, instant heat death from the hero killer or crushed by a building thrown by the screaming bird ending for me.

Going with the Wards or Protectorate also held the threat of a national-sized cape organization over the heads of the gang members and supervillains. Kill a Ward and end up with higher end capes from the Protectorate coming after you with kill orders in hand. Additional heat that the gangs would certainly not want to draw to themselves while the balance of power favors them. This would give me some protection from the gangs, as they are more likely going for a KO on a ward instead of outright killing them. Risk vs reward, few cape adults are going to want to be known for killing kids.

Option two: Rogue. Starting out as a rogue is an option but a bad one, There isn't many in town to join up with other then Browbeat who might not exist yet, Parian or Circus. Sure running around robbing gangbangers sounds like fun. Until they start following you home and start shooting or burning down your house. Or you stumble into an ambush to kill/injure you.

Option Three: Villain. Could join a gang or make my own and have a lot more freedom and money but also be faced with the risk of death from rival gangs. Regardless, the problem with that plan is that most of the gangs in Brockton Bay are racist, ABB for Asians and E88 for Nazi-whites.

Frankly, I don't see me qualifying for either, and the Merchants or Coil... no… just no.

Faultline's crew would probably be the next best option for me after the Wards, in addition to being case fifty-three friendly she stays fairly neutral as mercenaries for hire, doesn't hold territory and doesn't get involved in the typical gang wars. I think they do get briefly pulled into the S9 nonsense because of Firescar... Fireburn... Whoever it was, coming over for Labyrinth or was it Spitfire?

Wards it is, though I'm not terribly interested in having to see my face on underwear in the future. Maybe I can nix that as a condition of joining. As a backup plan, keep relations with Faultline positive and open.

* * *

Brockton Bay, the city that weeps broken dreams and broken people. It looked worse than Detroit did back in my world, but at least, it smelled better than Shanghai.

Frankly, the city was depressing to look at, it looked like only a small fraction of the city remained working. Whole blocks of buildings were boarded up, a couple standing houses had obviously been torched at some point. Trash was laying around everywhere, the bus lot we pulled into looked like it was last cleaned and decorated back in the 60's, well at least one thing was the same.

Goal one, go to or get noticed by the PRT and... Stomach rumbled, ok food first. The bus terminal attendant should know where to get some "real" food.

"Hey, do you know how to get to Fugly Bob's burgers from here?"

I hid the Chinese cash, whatever it's called; near the restaurant. Need to have it exchanged for American dollars sometime in the future until then it just leads to questions I don't want to answer.

Ahh the Challenger burger, it consisted of three one pound, hand-pressed patties of delicious meat. Thick slices of cheese in between each layer of meat and topped with pickles, lettuce, and tomato stacked high on a sesame seed bun and skewered together with oversized toothpicks just to keep it from falling apart. It dripped with grease and turned napkins opaque with the heart-clogging fat that pooled sluggishly on the plate while soaking into the sagging bottom bun. The cashier laughed at me when I ordered it along with fries and a drink.

I don't blame her, the monstrous burger was bigger than my head as a waitress dropped it off in front of me.

"Good luck hun, eat it within ten minutes and you can get a free T-shirt and have your picture up on the wall."

I ate it in seconds, I have to admit my mouth is freakishly large for my size and being able to reach up and push it down my throat and into my own stomach whole is an unfair advantage in eating contests. The burger and fries themselves were basically the same as a Five-Guys burger, through the fries were not as good. A free (kid sized) t-shirt and a photo of me grinning that huge toothy grin with a "Peace sign" pose were placed on the wall of winners.

After finishing my grease-soaked meal, I asked the cashier, "Can you give the PRT a ring, I woke up not too long ago looking like…this" I waved my hands down along my body. While waiting, I ate the fries slowly, my stomach visibly distended from the massive burger.

I regret nothing.

* * *

They showed up about thirty minutes later and escorted me to the PRT base in a commuter-type van with a steel grill in between the back and front, like a police car. They glanced at me occasionally, but rarely spoke beyond confirming I was the one who wanted to go "register" with the PRT as I sat down on the bench-seat and got as comfortable as I could for the ride.

My meeting with the director herself (in a dressed-up interrogation room of course) lasted all of five minutes since I was "so eager" to join the Wards. Thankfully she left after I signed on, the stench of urine lingering heavily around her which slowly filled the room while we talked. I know it was just her kidney failure issues causing it and most people probably couldn't smell it. The olfactory assault was replaced with an hour-long question session with Armsmaster about what I remembered. His attitude quickly had me giving him increasingly outlandish answers.

Even more amusing was that his lie detector didn't seem to work on me, or maybe he hadn't finished building it yet? I think he figured out that I was lying when I claimed to have some memories of being the inheritor of the Winchester fortune. Worth a try right? This of course only made things worse for me as he now wanted "serious" answers and proceeded to start over.

I slipped up on the name, I wasn't even thinking when I said: "Six two six" in response to what I remembered was my name.

"I don't know where that number came from, I just remember that as being my name," I replied

He leaned over the table, trying to intimidate me with his relative size "You don't remember anything else, who named you six two six, who called you six two six?"

"No, I have no memories of someone calling me six two six, it's just what came up off the top of my head when you asked for my name. I hadn't actually thought of what my name might be."

I mean who thinks about their own name, it's a given you know who you are. But when I tried remembering what my name was, all I got was six two six popping up. I didn't even think about it and just spouted it off like an idiot because I wasn't paying much attention to his questions.

He frowned for a few seconds and said watched me like a hawk, "Prisoner six two six, Experiment six two six?"

I couldn't help but twitch in shock and replied slowly "Yes, experiment six two six sounds familiar."

He took a wild stab and hit a nerve I didn't even know I had. I think he jumped to a wholly different conclusion about that number, though, likely thought I was "case fifty-three" number six hundred and twenty-six.

I paid a bit more attention to the questions after that and stuck with my generalized story of waking up in an alley and making my way here because I remembered it. Just in case, he reviews the video and calibrates the lie detector to me I used misleading answers whenever possible so as to not an outright lie.

An easy white lie of "remembering" to have turned seventeen at some point and one frustrated Armsmaster had me turned over to the "recruiting" department. Which was responsible for the actual legal issues and paperwork. Being cooperative and having some notable and easily provable "thinker" abilities like memorizing some of the legal documents in seconds and then reciting it from memory smoothed over any awkward "you certainly don't act like a seventeen-year-old" moments.

* * *

As awesome as this fluffy super-strong body is, it does have some substantial drawbacks which are quite irritating. For instance, nothing is really set at my height, the door handles, and light switches, countertops, couches, refrigerators, and chairs are all designed for people much taller than I am. Having to either jump up or climb up a wall or door just to turn a knob or open a cabinet gets frustrating the hundredth time you have to do it. Likewise, falling into the toilet because the hole is wider than your body is both inconvenient and embarrassing.

I definitely didn't spend the last ten minutes of my life taking an impromptu bath in the bathroom sink and used most of the paper towels in the dispenser to dry off.

Nope, didn't happen.

Also, now I'm naked, the clothes of course just ended up in the trashcan though I guess its ok as I am covered in fur. I rescued the cash, washed it and stuffed it ontop of a ceiling tile for now, I'll just grab it later.

"I thought you were wearing clothes when you went in there." my "oh so helpful" PRT escort commented as I finally exited the bathroom.

"I don't want to talk about it"

"You took an awfully long time in there, did you...?"

"Not another word" I growled out.

His lips tightened in a line of barely repressed laughter as he led the way.

Fantastic, this just makes everything even more awkward for me.

The PRT agent stopped in front of a metal door and pressed a button. "Just give them a few minutes to get their masks on."

After a short wait, the door unlocked and opened. The PRT agent closed the door behind me as I entered.

The dome-shaped room was well decorated with various bits of furniture, looking vaguely like a living room with dozens of computers monitors and multiple chairs off to one side. A countdown clock ticked away above the door I just entered though marked with "time until next tour group"

"Oh my god! He's so cute!" In seconds of entering, I was attacked by what must be a blond human shaped missile. It could only be Missy, aka Vista, and of course, she's taller than I am.

"You're so heavy. Wow, you smell good too!" as she tried to lift me up into a hug but only ended up dropping me immediately. Yes, thanks for commenting on my weight and treating me like a stuffed doll within seconds of meeting me. I'm so glad I was able to get the other "smells" out of my fur.

I gave an awkward four-armed hug around her in return, "Yes, um... thanks you can let me go now, though." she just clung to me more and rubbed my head and ears. Ok, I'm not complaining anymore, it does feel good.

"Anyways, I'm Vista, he's Aegis. Kid Win's on the console tonight and Clockblocker and Gallant are out on patrol." She points to a fairly muscular teenager standing next to a table with what's obviously homework strewn ontop of it. And no mention of Shadow Stalker, awesome.

"Vista..." the larger teen warned.

"But he's so fluffy!" she replied energetically while petting my head.

"Ittt'sss fine" I said melting a little as she enthusiastically rubbed the bases of my ears. uuuggghhhh. I then slid onto the ground face down and spread out all six limbs and did my best impression of a puddle.

"So Fluffy!" I think she said

Vista continued treating me as a fluffy teddy bear and continued cuddling, hugging and petting me. I think the other wards eventually came in at some point and poked me a few times but I was fairly out of it by then and half-asleep but I did manage a few halfhearted waves. It was obviously the jet lag catching up with me, totally the jet lag.


	5. Chapter 5

Like Weld in Boston, I ended up with a court-appointed guardian, who didn't actually work for the Wards program or the Protectorate. The "neutral" court appointed attorney was of course still very eager to get me into the Wards program, color me surprised. Being only a year away from becoming "eighteen" made it fairly pointless to try and find a family or get adopted and everyone agreed to just go with an appointed attorney.

Power testing was extremely boring, except for the part where I punched their punching machine "as hard as you can" and made it explode. Okay, okay it didn't explode (only the hydraulic cylinder did) but I did make it rip out of the ground and flatten nicely against the wall. Also getting me into position for most of the tests or modifying them so I could reach them became a huge problem which took hours to sort out.

Also the part about Stitch lifting three thousand times his own weight has been somewhat confirmed, the hydraulic press they used for testing out brute ratings didn't go that high, unfortunately. But with the power of math, it's trivial to figure out, I apparently weigh about seventy pounds, theoretically " _three thousand times his own weight_ " is two hundred and ten thousand pounds. Which is an astonishing one hundred and five tons or ninety five metric tons.

A modern Abrams tank weighs in at 65 tons, A small two story house like the one from UP weights in around 45 tons.

The thought that I could throw houses or tanks at people, _Scary_.

Or fun, well fun for me anyways, everyone else can just bliznak themselves as I toss planes, trains, automobiles and with a bit of straining, their overweight mothers at them.

I didn't bother telling them any of that so my strength is listed as "Broke the strength testing machine" which looked like a common industrial hydraulic press mounted overtop of a very thick press bench and modified with a thick "lifting bar" for the user to press against. They, of course want to reschedule for a later date, after they get a stronger machine.

Whatever, I just know that I enjoyed destroying things while the PRT employees watched. Except the part where they drew blood with a particularly strong and large needle, it came out a bright pink. Also, the famous containment foam sticks to my fur quite well, fortunately for me it doesn't stop my limbs from moving and tearing through it. It just leaves me covered in small broken pieces of foam stuck all over my fur.

Containment foam can't contain me, mwahaha!

More interesting was the tinker test, where they simply presented me with a bench full of tools and a bunch of parts including a few advanced items like energy projectors. I assembled a crappy barely-functional Federation-like energy blaster gun in about ten minutes, which was promptly taken away for testing. Honestly, I don't know where that came from, I think I remember Stitch in the movie repairing and building a few things, but assembling a blaster from miscellaneous parts seemed to be a bit of a stretch.

I low-balled my enhanced hearing during the thinker test portions as it's always nice to be able to overhear people talking about you where they think they can't be overheard. Happily showed off my acute sense of smell. Blazed through advanced math and logic problems like they were checkboxes and showed off my eidetic memory.

I kept the spines in and the antenna and extra arms out. I didn't really need to hide the fact that I wasn't human and the extra arms were just too convenient to leave tucked inside all the time. It's the small things like having four arms and being omni-dexterous which really make up for the negatives. I also liked the idea of making the Protectorate pay to have clothing tailored for four limbed-me.

I never bothered to show them that my arms were retractable. Yes, the PRT/Protectorate will be forced to pay for custom clothing, mwahaha. It's so diabolically evil it scares me.

A few rooms away the PRT employees "were going over the results" and started talking about me possibly being either as strong as or stronger than Alexandria herself, but not as durable. Eh, whatever.

Far more interesting was the ongoing discussion a few rooms down about how to beat me and what ratings I should be assigned. I'm not surprised, I'm sure they have plans for each of the wards or protectorate members in case they go rogue. Honestly, it's all very Batman-esque. They did make a special note to see how well Gallant's emotion beams work on me.

Eventually, I got access to a computer while one of the employee's was filling out some paperwork. Tisk tisk, you shouldn't leave your computer unlocked. A few quick "google" searches about Disney movies and I had an answer to a question that was bothering me. The first thing out of people's mouths should be oh wow look it's stitch. Instead, I got nothing, the answer was simple "Lilo and Stitch" the movies and the cartoon series were never made here or on "Aleph".

Weird.

Guess I'm not going to be a movie star anytime soon.

* * *

The nicknames have started getting out of hand, I'm alternately being called "The Tiny Titan", "Mighty Muppet" or "The Incredible Blue Ball" (thank you Clockblocker). Something I had been delaying was picking out a name, I hadn't really heard or read anything I liked. There had already been lists of cape-name "suggestions" that had been shoved under my nose a couple times. Most of them either blatantly pushing my "cute and fluffiness" or pushing for a strength-based name. Frankly, I'm not going with mister "Fluff" anytime soon nor am I going to be the fifth "Atlas" half of which had been ironically crushed in some form or fashion.

Of course, the majority of my suggestions were promptly shot down. Apparently names based on weapons and weapons of mass destruction are _inappropriate_.

I did eventually get a name out of all of the arguing and back-and-forth suggestions. I went with Six-Two-Six, it was unique and didn't have any connotations attached to it. Frankly, the PRT thought it was marketable enough to use which is where their concern ended. Anyways it's better than the crap they were trying to stick me with while shooting down my own suggestions.

I'm still partial to Fluffy Armageddon or Max 'Splosion as a cape name, just a shame that they shot those ones down.

And "now" my nickname is "Six by Six" Toobaga Clockblocker.

My large muscular opponent started out with an incredibly awkward straight punch downward towards my head. I stuck my feet to the mat and caught his fist in one of my upper hands and pulled. Sending him tumbling towards me. I grabbed his calves with two lower arms and picked him up and threw him behind me.

Turning to face him again I got to enjoy the sight of him bouncing off the safety mats lining the walls before hopping back up unhurt. He rushed back at me before going for a fast low kick at my chest.

Keeping my feet stuck I took the blow and wrapped two arms around his leg before casually lifting him up by it and using it to bash him against the ground. I lifted him back up into the air with him flailing around awkwardly as he relentlessly and viciously kicked my head with his other leg. I ignored the almost nonexistent flash of pain as his foot pounded my nose and my eyes.

"Ow," I said tonelessly before swinging him back down into the ground again.

I swung him back and forth a couple of times using his leg to control most of his body. While he kicked me repeatedly whenever he could. Neither of us seemed to be doing much damage to the other. I threw him towards the opposite wall and its safety mats but he caught himself mid-air and went for a flying double-fisted punch into my face.

The mat on the ground tore under me, the parts of it stuck to my feet tore away from the rest of the mat as I was flung into the air and bounced off of the wall behind me. I held out my hands and landed on them, doing a hand-stand then kicking the large chunks of torn mat pieces stuck to my feet at him before doing a short flip back onto my feet.

"I don't think we're getting anywhere with this." I said, un-phased by the collision with the safety mat covered wall.

Aegis grinned and stretched, "I didn't even get a warm up and you're calling it quits."

Grinning back at him, "I'm a little leery about actually punching someone, the testing machine went splat and broke. Limited to just throwing you around... well I think we'd just tear up the gym before doing any actual damage to each other."

Aegis shrugged, "Fair enough, It is just a spar" and looked over at Battery.

She shrugged, looked over at the others and picked out the lazing clock covered boy, "Clockblocker, you're up."

Fantastic, a chance at revenge for the nicknames. I grinned and cracked all four of my knuckles as Aegis took a seat. Hmm.. how to fight him, grab the mat and throw it on top of him then pummel. Or just juggle him in the air, maybe put him in a full nelson. Don't let him touch you unless you got a good grip on him first.

He sighed and stood up, adjusting his pants before hopping up onto the mat and walking over into the marked area.

"Alright blue ball let's do this." he taunted me with that nickname again!

I stared at him with a vicious toothy smile, "Come on over and join the fun."

Battery spoke up, "You can start whenever ladies, don't do anything dangerous if you haven't been paying attention _**Clockblocker**_. Six-Two-Six, Clockblocker isn't a brute, don't throw him too far. It's just a friendly spar."

I grinned, friendly, sure I can do " _friendly_ ".

"Of course of course, but what exactly am I supposed to show in this again? I mean he's just like Aegis right, so it's just a matter of who…" he immediately lunged at me with his hands outstretched.

It didn't take much to rush forward under his awkward downward-lunge at me and grab his lower legs.

He shouted out, "I give!"

"Bata Naba Gata!" I shouted in frustration, squeezing his lower calves a little.

"Ow shit! Stop!" he shouted

I sighed and let him go quickly, he rubbed his calves briefly before grinning at me.

"I might have to take the rest of the day off. No, wait, the next few days... Oh oww, the pain... so much pain." Clockblocker said mockingly before limping away in an exaggerated fashion.

Battery rolled her eyes at him "Walk it off, baby."

"No, can't you tell I'm crippled for life!" he whined before plopping back down on the floor.

"I'll never play basketball or soccer again!" he said while looking completely unconcerned.

Battery buried her face in her hand, "You don't play either of those sports, as is. Gallant, you're next!"

Clockblocker leaned back against the wall and feigned interest "I just announcing my retirement as a professional basketball and soccer player ahead of time. It has no relationship to my recent career-ending injury. I wouldn't want the ladies to be too concerned about my health."

"Just…" she cut off her own reply and sucked in a deep breath and shouted out "Gallant get over there!"

I heard her mutter very quietly under her breath, "Goddamn brats, just one more month, just one more month."

Gallant stretched briefly before stepping onto the mat. I chuckled a bit at Battery's woes. I think I heard rumors of her and Assault getting penalized for something. I assume that means that they are on "babysit-the-kids" duty.

I spoke up as Gallant got into the starting area, "So, this spar session is basically just everyone line up and try beating up the new guy?"

Gallant replied with a soft chuckle, "Hmm pretty much, everyone has to work alongside you and the quickest way of getting to know your capabilities and powers personally is to have to fight you. Knowing what everyone's power is on paper isn't the same as having to actually fight them or fight alongside them."

"Whenever" Battery shouted out, signaling the informal start of the match.

Gallant fired a beam very quickly and directly at me, shoving me backward slightly with the unexpected force.

What... is this some sort...

"Phh... Hahahahah!"

I couldn't help myself, it was the funniest thing. What a weak little tickle beam of "death". What does he really think he can defeat me with this nonsense?

"Ha-Ha-ha Hah Ha-ha" I rolled around on the ground laughing and pounding my fists against the mat. Until I was gasping for breath. Suddenly the beam cut off and it wasn't nearly as funny as it had been.

Well, so... that happened. Gallant chuckled and helped me up.

"Ur... Good match" I said weakly.

"Don't worry about it, powers are funny like that. You never quite know how some of them might interact until you try them out."

"Vista!" Battery called out

"Good luck," said Gallant cheerfully before heading back to the others.

The twelve-year-old skipped over to the mat and wagged a finger at me. "You should try dodging next time."

I rolled my eyes

"Whenever," said Battery tiredly.

I rushed at Vista, a quick attack before she can stretch space... and. yep, that's some Alice-in-wonderland like effect there. I'm not making much progress towards her... how about to the side. Nope... fantastic already inside of her warped space.

She just giggled.

Alright, she's just a twelve-year-old... cute attack go!

Widening my eyes, I fell to the ground, whimpering at all of the weird stretched out space around me. I looked over at her and made the saddest of faces with my large ears drooping down behind me. I slowly started curling up into a poor defenseless ball of despair and fear.

She cracked and space unwarped before she rushed over to give me a hug.

I grabbed her with all four arms, "Gotcha!"

Her face turned an interesting shade of red, "You... you tricked me!" she said with all the indignation and anger a twelve-year-old could produce. Before she punched me alongside my grinning head.

"It's just a spar, calm down." I said as she rubbed her fist with her other hand.

"Fantastic, finally over, everyone take a shower and then let's go have some dinner." Battery shouted.

I could feel Vista's anger and her shock at being betrayed settle into my stomach like a cold hard lump. I felt like a lump of bliznak.

"Help me... my legs, they're oh so broken, Aegis. Aegis carry me! Be my shining knight in shining armor!" said Clockblocker, rolling onto his stomach and crawling on the ground towards him, reaching out to grasp his leg.

"Nope," said Aegis as he dodged Clockblocker's outstretched hand and sprinted for the showers.

"Oh woe is me, my teammates have abandoned me!" wailed Clockblocker.

Everyone else shuffled to their feet and headed to the shower areas, avoiding Clockblocker's prone form on the floor. I went ahead and grabbed him by the arm and dragged him behind me.

"Ow ow, goddamn you got some sharp claws on those hands. Sheesh let go, already."

"Fine" I dropped his arm.

He quickly smiled, tagged me with his hand, and the entire gym emptied instantly.

 _Bliznak_

I had to wait for one of the showers to open up, the water was _cold_ and by the time I got out the room was empty.


	6. Chapter 6

Director Piggot briefly glossed over the report on her desk before raising her eyes to the two parahumans waiting silently in front of her desk.

"Report," she said sharply while giving Armsmaster a glance.

Armsmaster's lips twitched in annoyance, as it's all clearly written in the report. "He's an Alexandria package minus the flight but add on tinker abilities. Extraordinarily strong, on Alexandria's level of brute strength, however, he doesn't seem to be as tough as her. However, the pistol he made is quite fascinating, crude but that is to be expected from the generic components we keep on hand for the test. The primary discharge seems to be a low-lethality bolt of green energy which explodes on contact, it imparts a large amount of kinetic force, heat, and an electrical discharge."

"Low lethality?" the director asked

"Like a low-level Taser, combined with the force equivalent to a punch from a mid-to-high-weight professional boxer and some minor burns from the energy involved. It's somewhat similar to the force of Gallant's beam minus the emotional alterations. It seems to work by inducing inertial cavitation in a ball of plasma in air charged with"

Piggot cut him off, "Is it usable?"

Armsmaster frowned and continued, "This one... well the range is terrible and it only had a few shots in it. But yes this plasma shot is usable in the Wards, it's far less hazardous than Kid Win's current lasers. However the most interesting part is that it looks like it might be mass producible."

The director stiffened and sat up in her chair a bit higher, "Explain."

"As you know most tinker devices are extremely difficult to service or make, however, his plasma pistol seems to be designed to be easy to make and easy to service. The one he produced mostly used off the shelf components for the majority of the gun. The most exotic pieces seem to be an odd resonance chamber and a heavily altered microwave emitter. I sent a scan of it along with some of my notes to Dragon and she agrees that the pistol itself could be easily produced in a factory."

Piggot sat in silence for a few moments digesting this before leaning over her desk, pointing to Armsmaster. "First off, we don't need the other PRT directors protesting the fact that we effectively now have three tinkers in house. Keep a lid on information about his tinker abilities and give him access to either your or Kid Win's lab until he settles in. Make him comfortable here so that he refuses to leave when the other Directors get wind of our third tinker and try to lure him away or try to cause a political shitstorm to try forcing our hand."

She grinned slightly at Armsmaster "After all it's the most efficient way of doing things, with two other tinkers on base to check over his work and your connections to Dragon he has the best tinker support structure right here in Brockton Bay. Armsmaster, just try to be supportive for once."

Armsmaster nodded subtly

Piggot pointed towards Miss Militia, "Now yours."

Miss Militia started with her unofficial report, "Socially, he's fitting in with the rest of the Wards quite well. Missy seems to be particularly fond of him and tends to treat him as a pet. The other Wards tease him a little about it. During the requested spar it became apparent that Gallant's emotion beam worked on him. However Gallant has also told me that he can't pick up any emotions from him."

"Odd and unfortunate, any other issues?"

"Yes, in addition to having his clothing tailored, some of the furniture and things like the occasional doorknob around the base have to be changed to lever handle doors with a rope hanging off of them and a few toilet seats around the base might also have to be changed out so he can use them."

That got a raised brow from the director, "Toilet seats?"

"The hole is too big apparently, there seems to have been already been an incident. There are apparently some toilet seats on the market that have an extra folding layer which reduces the standard hole size to a smaller one for people of diminutive sizes." Miss Militia said while trying her best to keep a straight face.

The director's lips curled up in amusement before she motioned for Miss Militia to continue.

"More problematic might be the fixed height electronic things like the eye scanners, fingerprint readers, numeric pads, light switches and the elevator buttons. He's stated that footstools in front of them or nearby would be fine. I've already submitted the requests to the accounting office to purchase most of the equipment in question."

The director interrupted, "I'll have the accounting department see what the case fifty-three fund covers or check to see if the Americans with disabilities act might cover some of those expenses. Anything else?" she looked back and forth towards Armsmaster and Miss Militia who stayed silent.

Piggot turned to Armsmaster, "He'll be starting classes at Arcadia next week, Colin since he's living on base can you make sure he gets up in time? I'll have someone from the motor pool to drop him off and pick him up."

She continued,"The PR department is also sending over some costume designs, they'll be on your desk by tomorrow. I expect him to make his decision by the end of the week to send back to them."

"Dismissed"

* * *

Colin frowned at the pile of torn up and shredded costume ideas laying all over his desk. He hadn't even looked at them himself yet. Some of them even looked like they had been chewed on with bite marked-sections missing from them. A large portion of them were wet and covered with a thick glue-like substance to stick them all together.

Disgusting

A new, poorly drawn out sketch in crayon sat on top of the shredded, wet mess depicting a blue "Six-two-six" in a red jumpsuit like outfit with yellow triangular patches on it. Hmm, nothing objectionable about it, he plucked it off the top and took it over to a scanner to send to the costume department.

As the scanner warmed up Colin looked around and at the secure door to his office and lab. Six-Two-Six shouldn't have access to his lab, how exactly did he get in here?

* * *

Six-Two-Six waddled down the street, short legs rapidly swinging back and forth as he kept pace alongside the taller Ward whose costume was decorated with clocks.

Clockblocker set a fast pace as he jogged, keeping just in front of the short blue dog-like parahuman while panting heavily. Sweat soaked into the fabric of his clock-covered full-face mask as they came to the end of their run.

The little blue six-limbed dog-like thing in it's red jumpsuit looked over at his heavily panting partner, "Soo.. why are we running on patrol?"

The teen huffed a bit before finding a spot to sit, collapsing onto a reasonably clean cement stair for the business behind him. Before grabbing his bottle of water and gulping down some of it before replying.

"I just... need to run sometimes."

The blue furred thing nodded, it's ears shifting to the back a bit before it took a seat on the lowest stair, several of its hands smoothing over its outfit while others adjusted it's multiple pistol harness as it sat down.

They both sat in silence for a while as Clockblocker cooled off.

After a few minutes of silence and watching the pedestrians walk past them. Its ears twitched a bit before it spoke up, "So... Clockbuster how do you like being a hero?"

Clockblocker shrugged and wiped his brow, only managing to tug his fabric face-mask awkwardly to one side, "It's okay, the perks are nice, the adoration of fans, women throwing themselves at you and naming their children after you."

It grinned, it's mass of teeth gleaming in it's far-too-wide mouth. "Funny, I can even imagine someone naming their kid Clockblocker and the reactions that would get."

The teen chuckled, "Yeah, that would be pretty funny. Well, there's also the free food at PR events, putting on our gowns for the dances and hobnobbing with the snobs. It's totally worth the mind-numbing patrols and the occasional deadly fights with people who can incinerate you with a breath. Oh, did I mention the minimum wage pay for Wards?"

The fluffy thing sat for a while before it tucked its legs up against its body, grabbing onto its knees with its lower hands. It seemed to struggle for a while with something.

"I.. Bliznak.. I don't know what to do…"

"What to do about what?"

"This world, it's Bliznaked… Beesa sota... Aroomba Micha Nigicha Aba Tooka" It said

"Urr..You're not speaking English, I can't follow that."

The little blue thing looked shocked.. before calming itself back down and started again.

"The world is all messed up, it's dying and I don't know what to do about it." It paused for a second.

"This world, this body, I can't... I can't make anything strong enough to kill endbringers it's not enough. I can't save the world." It grabbed its own ears with its upper hands and tugged. "It's.. pathetic.. I'm. pathetic.. Questa." the six-limbed thing slumped against the stair and folded its arms around itself.

Clockblocker waved his hand in negation "Whoa whoa, kinda out of left field with this. I'm not sure I'm the one you should really be talking to about this either. Besides, why are you trying to save the world, it's hard enough just getting by and living in it."

Six-Two-Six looked down at his own knees, rubbing the fur on them lightly and tugging a bit on the edge of the suit. "Then why am I here, why am I like this."

Clockblocker looked awkward behind his skintight mask and very quietly replied, "That's.. probably what all the other case 53's ask themselves."

The furry blue creature looked over at him with wide sad eyes. It said softly, "Is that all I am.. just another once-human thing with a less scrambled mind than the others. Maybe.. maybe I am just another one..."

Clockblocker raised his arms in defense. "Hey, hey. I'm probably the last guy you should asking about this sort of thing. This…" Clockblocker put his hand on the back of his head and sighed. "...This kinda thing is too heavy for me. I just try to get by with a few jokes, get a few laughs and roll with the punches."

Clockblocker sighed and leaned back against the wall behind him. "Why are you worried about that anyways? You've been doing great just building more of those pistols for the PRT."

"It's... it's not enough." Six-Two-Six replied while tugging on his suit and looking down at his bare elephant-like feet.

"Who says that isn't enough, I think you should just keep tinkering and you'll do plenty of good. I mean Kid Win still doesn't know what his specialty is and he's struggling too."

"Maybe, It just doesn't feel like it's enough."

"Well, maybe an idea or something will come to you later. I wouldn't worry about it too much, you'll never be good enough to outshine me."

Six-Two-Six looked up at Clockblockers fully covered face and said, "Wha.. oh haha."


	7. Chapter 7

After working alongside Kid Win in his lab, I could tell he was a bit miffed at having to share what was previously his space and equipment. But I think he was even more irritated by my Plasma pistol and its relative success since his own laser pistol was considered to be far too lethal to use.

After working on another plasma pistol for a while in the silent room, I took a break and made a big production of going through some of Kid Win's sketches to try and broach the subject of his tinkering.

A bit of minor future knowledge could help him out and ease the tension between us.

Honestly, the designs are a mess, extra needless crap everywhere, circuits that don't even seem to do anything other than make it more complex. Circuits that shouldn't be able to do what they're apparently doing. I guess this is what they meant by Tinkertech being too complex to manufacture.

I remember reading about an experiment using evolutionary algorithms for coding, where they had an FPGA chip, a type of chip that can change its circuitry electronically. They couldn't get the resulting "evolutionary-created" code to work on anything other than the original FPGA chip, the code itself was apparently using minute manufacturing flaws in that specific chip to work. This stuff seems to be very similar to it.

The tinkers themselves probably don't understand what they are doing or even why, it just works in the end if they build it "this" way using the instructions and designs created by their shards, adapting the designs to the various manufacturing flaws in the chips as they go, likely unaware of the flaws themselves. Oddly enough I understood fundamentally what was going on in Kid Win's schematics, I could alter and tweak them to whatever I wanted and I knew exactly how to build them. But when I thought about removing some of the tinker-hardware-DRM my understanding started sputtering out before the sheet just turned back into an incomprehensible mess.

Did I have some sort of tinker-ability myself, or was this just my "supercomputer" Stitch brain just tearing the technology apart for me or copying it? As far as I could tell, the federation based tech stuff wasn't being provided by any sort of "shard" but was instead provided by "Stitch's" programmed brain. I guess it was for the infiltration and destruction programming Stitch had.

The federation tech was unfortunately limited, besides hundreds of frankly useless "federation" security system schematics, it was limited to a variety of guns and a "jetpack". There were also plans for nearly every Federation spaceship but some of the major systems that the ships used were currently impossible to build. I couldn't think of ways to manufacture them with any of the equipment or materials we had in the lab, the precision and materials needed were just not available.

The anti-gravity system, powerplant, shields and spaceship-sized weaponry all seemed to require alloys that I didn't know how to make or had tolerances measured in the alien equivalent of Planck-lengths. The life support system was something that could be made fairly easily, but it wasn't particularly compact and I didn't really see much need for it.

I looked over Kid Win's stuff again, it was even easier to understand the second time. The schematics themselves were basically nonsense but I could easily see how to integrate his power supply into the federation pistol design. Somehow, instinctively I just knew how and where to attach everything together. Quickly a new design formed inside my head, the combined modular tinker power supply attached to the federation gun.

Making the combined gun... fairly useless as it became dependent on the tinkertech itself, killing the benefit of being mass producible. Still that power pack.. packed a hell of a lot more power then the federation stuff. I wonder how it worked.. and as I was concentrating on it the power pack design exploded in my head.

I almost gasped at the sudden influx of technology that was " **Small Modular Powerpack** " as it was dumped into my head.

The entire detailed design and how-to-make-with-what-you-have instructions basically unfolded before me, instructions on how to get various voltage out of it or how to alter the power packs shape, size, and total power capacity. I could see a 3-D holographic like model of it, the circuits continually fluctuated, flipping in between variations on the design.

Except, even as I thought about it and some of the federation tech.. some of the federation tech could be fitted with the modular power packs. **Small Modular Powerpack** seemed to drift around the various federation-tech schematics, connecting into nearly every gun and spaceship design in my head that I had. New designs appeared with itself **Small Modular Powerpack** added into the federation-tech guns in place of their mass-producible power packs. In just a few seconds I had an entire "row" of feasible designs using **Small Modular Powerpack** and several rows of "less than ideal" spaceship designs, some of the smaller spaceships had a few hundred power packs chained together to form one giant rechargeable power pack for the ship, replacing the original "I-don't-know-how-to-build-this" federation power generators. The larger spaceship designs ended up with tens-of-thousands and were just frankly impossible to build in a reasonable amount of time.

The Federation tech outside of the stuff I couldn't manufacture was of course just normal technology, sure it's intergalactic-level stuff but it's still designed and created to be produced inside of a factory instead of being hobbled by alien hardware DRM. The guns and jetpack were frankly dead-simple I only had to modify the designs a little to get them to work with the materials and manufacturing equipment I had. The new **Small Modular Powerpack** designs certainly looked to be considerably more powerful and longer-lasting but couldn't be mass produced like the original federation tech was.

I sat in silence for a while, ruminating on what this could possibly mean. I was planning on just spitting out the federation tech stuff simply to make some additional money on the side and to help out the PRT itself with mass-producible high tech guns. Unhindered with tinkertech DRM the federation-tech would provide an incredible advantage when every PRT officer effectively becomes a "blaster".

As just a "Stitch" level brute there wasn't much I could actually do that would matter much in the upcoming battles, besides Bakuda, Leviathan and the S9 most of the battles were all villain vs villain and didn't involve the PRT much. Spitting out mass produced guns and the jetpacks would certainly help the PRT, maybe even provide them with a way of "winning" against more supervillains nationwide (and then conscripting them into the ranks).

With actual pseudo-tinker abilities, honestly, I wasn't sure if that was enough either. What could I build that could take out the endbringers or the real threat, Scion? Was my "tinker ability" locked like everyone else's to prevent access/danger to scion?

Something to think about anyways.

"You know some of these designs you have here are rather interesting, I think I see a pattern."

"A pattern," he said dismissively while hunched over his own project.

"Yes, a lot of the separate components that you have here have extra connections which seem to be unnecessary for the job they do."

"Yes, Armsmaster complains about them frequently and instructs me on how to eliminate them." he says bitterly, not even looking up from the latest version of his own pistol.

"Well I'm not sure if that's the right approach, I think you two are accidentally working at cross purposes. The connections seem to be intentional because to me it looks like your components are modular. You know, use the same power pack for different things or attach components onto a device for different functions sorta like the batteries from power drills being able to be used in circular saws and hammer drills."

I held out one of his diagrams towards him, "The most obvious example is your power pack here which has separate connections for outputting different voltages for different requirements. I see where you and Armsmaster have modified that design and removed the extra power buses which allowed for that modular approach."

He looked at me for a few seconds, I could see his brain churning before he dropped the partially assembled laser pistol back onto the counter and basically ran to his empty sketchbook and started drawing.

"Yes... yes, that was it!" He turned to me with an actual smile plastered across his face, "Thanks, Six-Two-Six!"

"No problem" I replied before turning back to my own projects and tried to focus on my immediate plans.

I finished the fifth pistol and started on the six, now that I have a rhythm down, all the components arranged and the custom-parts fabricated I'm planning on assembling ten today. Most will be going to the local PRT employees, one for Armsmaster, one for Kid win, three for Dragon (along with the "official" schematics) for tear-down and examples for mass production.

One problem I still had was they still looked like toy ray guns even after I painted them black and tried a few other color schemes. The bulbous housing was necessary for the chamber inside of the gun. I did my best to at least make the handle and trigger look more like a typical gun handle for the testers and the PRT employees, the ones I had made for myself had much smaller handles and triggers fitted for my hands.

I also started work on recharge cradles, it had to both charge up the battery inside and pump the gas mixture into its storage container which dispensed a small amount to be heated for each shot into it. Each gun was capable of several hundred rounds on the low setting or about fifty shots on the high power setting. The power was select-able via a switch near where the thumb would be, which also turned the gun off and acted as the safety. There wasn't any magazine-type reloading mostly because I didn't want to bother with having to make them since the original designs didn't have them either, space for magazines would also reduce the number of shots that could be stored.

After finishing the ten pistols, I started work on the design for the larger rifle version. Basically just putting down on paper the rifle that Jumba used in the first movie, only a few minor tweaks were needed to use the current tech level of production and I threw in a few other firing options common to assault rifles.

"Damn Six-Two-Six, how the hell did you make so many of those already? It took me several days to make my laser pistol" asked Kid Win after he finally took a break from his schematic-drawing "trance".

I looked up from the schematics of the rifle I was still working on.

"Four arms, omnidexterity, x-ray vision to see into and through circuitry, the ability to bend metal with my bare hands and stunningly good looks," I replied.

To be fair, I am unnaturally good at soldering and drawing now, far, far better than I used to be as just a hobbyist. It's actually faster for me to draw the designs on paper with four arms going at it and then scan them into a computer, rather than using a computer program to do the layout.

I think I was benefiting from some of Stitch's incredible learning curve. In the movie, he picked up a guitar and mastered it in a few minutes. He... and I basically have some sort of perfect-hand eye coordination thing going on, combine that with the eidetic memory and some weird intuitive understanding of things and well... it gives me a sort of pseudo-"Uber" like learning power.

"Cheater," he said and laughed.

"If you're not cheating, you're not doing it right," I replied cheekily.

* * *

Only those who knew Colin well could tell he was excited, the refined plasma pistols were frankly amazing. But not a trace of that would show on his grim face, something about the schematics both tantalized and offended his tinkering abilities. There were plenty of places to make the pistol much more compact but frustratingly it would only make the pistol more difficult to manufacture.

His abilities went off into spiraling tangents while he stared at the circuit diagram, almost making him nauseous as his power pushed him to turn those straight and elegantly laid out traces into more compact and twisting pathways. The circuit design, so simple and full of easy to follow circuitry which taunted him so, looked like something you would find in a calculator and not in tinkertech.

This... this thing wasn't tinkertech, He assumed that the first pistol was just cobbled together, it's crap range and power a testament to the mediocre components and rushed assembly used in its construction. The quick scan made of that cobbled together thing with mismatched parts and hurried solder joints everywhere showed its potential and taunted him and Dragon with the possibility that it could be mass produced, but now looking at a completed design of the far superior weapon he felt almost offended by it.

Most tinkers wouldn't even finish something out of the tinker-tech pile of components used in the test but a tinker could show some sort of partial device or more often some designs. This, this thing was refined engineering from a designer who made this specifically to manufacture it in a factory on the cheap. This was like Masamune's work but writ large.

"This is the design?" Dragon said, snapping him out of his contemplation.

"Yes, it's... " Elegant, simple, complex, nauseating, horrifying and beautiful to look at at the same time. He didn't know what to say about it.

"...Something" he finished lamely.

She chuckled on screen, "Surprisingly simple perhaps? So how did the testing go?"

"It's powerful on the high setting, easily mimicking a force similar to what you would expect to find on most Blaster type capes with a three or four rating. Mostly kinetic and concussive force, some temporary electrical-disturbance in the nerves of the target similar to a weak taser and also causes minor burning on flesh. But it also tears holes in inorganic materials." The smell of the cold burnt pig had reminded him to eat lunch today.

"The low setting is similar to the first pistol, packing the force of a strong punch. The range on both high and low is nominal and are vastly improved from the cobbled together prototype, equivalent to the standard engagement range expected from pistols."

Dragon nodded on screen, "Well, like the first one and based on the designs I could probably manufacture these en-masse... or really anyone who had the industrial capacity to make a microwave could. Honestly these sound exciting, I can't wait to get my hands on the sample. Does the charger work?"

"Yes, it's just a battery charger, not much different than what you would find for any other lithium battery charger. The gas that it uses is just hydrogen and argon, both extremely common and cheap."

He frowned, "There's... there's just nothing exotic or tinkertechish about this, it's off-putting. It's... it's like looking at a microwave oven."

"But that what's so exciting about it Armsmaster, The manufacturing costs and complexity I estimate would be roughly on par with a low-end handgun. The entire PRT force could have these in hand in a few months" Dragon said excitedly, her on-screen avatar almost brimming with high-spirited energy.

Armsmaster stared down at the design again before picking up the pistol itself. It was useful, incredibly so, a game changer just by itself, a low lethality multi-shot pistol that cost a fraction of normal tinkertech. This pistol would effectively give the PRT officers all blaster ratings if that were true.

He wasn't sure how he felt about that.

The day wasn't even finished before the designs for a larger, longer range and even more, powerful Assault rifle version were handed over as well. The rifle itself showed up after dinner.

It could be dialed up further for more destructive blasts, had a lethal mode and had typical assault rifle settings like burst fire, automatic fire, and semi-auto modes and was just as mass producible as the pistol was.

Colin felt sick looking at it, it was not suitable for the Wards or the Protectorate members. It was obviously designed strictly with PRT officers in mind it even had standardized rails for customization on it.


	8. Chapter 8

"Kidddd… Wiiiinn… earth to Kid Win…"

"What is it Six-Two-Six, I'm busy with Triumph's armor," he said while hunched over the opened breastplate with some tiny tools in hand.

"Can I look at your laser pistol and any other schematics you might have while you're working on that armor? Oh, have you made any personal shields by chance?"

"Yes go ahead, feel free to dig around in the pile. No, I haven't made any personal shields." He said while looking over at me.

Placing his tools down briefly he pointed at me. "You know, Six-Two-Six I've been meaning to tell you. I can't take you seriously in that lab coat, it just looks ridiculous on you."

"It was the smallest one they had in stock! Fitted ones are coming next week." I said while flailing the oversized sleeves around.

I liked how I looked in a lab coat, it was cool. I mean sure it's a bit big, but it was the smallest they had. It still gave me some protection from the spills and stains from the various things used in the workshop. Trying to get some of the fluids and semi-solids out of my fur was just a pain in the butt.

"I'm just saying... you look like a toddler wearing his parents coat in that thing." before he turned back to his own work.

I rolled my eyes at him and turned back to the pile of papers Kid Win had created and left piled on his desk. I decided to try and repeat the experience I had with the modular power supply and to see if I could vacuum up tinkertech-technology. Oh look, schematics for the power armor Kid Win was busy with, yay and completely useless for me. Death-dealing laser pistol and an even bigger cannon-sized laser YOINK! and the hoverboard he would eventually start building, meh. A few minutes studying them in detail, mostly sorting out the papers to figure where everything was at to assemble the full designs in my mind and after a few minutes of concentrating on the tech itself I had suddenly had **Solid State Lasers** , **Basic Power Armour** , **Micro Power Generator**.

All sorts of new designs popped up, nearly every spaceship suddenly had a **Solid State Laser** weapon variant design along with thousands of **Micro Power Generators** replacing most of the **Small Modular Powerpack** in the spaceships. **Micro Power Generator** , **Small Modular Powerpack** , **Solid State Laser** combined to form a lethal-powered gun very similar to Kid Win's but which recharged itself over time. The powerpack and laser by itself made one almost identical to his laser pistol. A new version of the nonlethal federation pistol also formed with the powerpack and the generator to give a similarly self-recharging model, that is beside the gas supply which still needed to be refilled.

That new self-recharging Kid-Win style laser pistol was so tempting, shame it seemed to suffer the same problem as Kid's Win version with it basically being lethal-only. Then again you never know when you might need more firepower. Might make a few for myself and submit them to PRT reviews just so they can tell me not to use them during patrols.

On a bit of reflection, It does make sense that if I was dumped here as a case53-ish-thing/Copy of Stitch I might have been given some actual parahuman power. If nothing other than to prevent me from ending up with some random one later on, which could cause some rather pointed questions. Obviously, my specialty is reverse engineering or something similar with the way I can pick stuff up from others. Maybe a copy of Dragon's specialty which I think was essentially the same thing. Regardless, to increase my own safety I really wanted to put a video-game like shield between me and everything else in this dangerous world, I just had to find one.

Also, a nice red spaceship would be fantastic if I could get enough tinkertech to replace the federation-tech systems I can't make.

"Win, Do you know of anyone who has made a personal shield?"

"Well you can ask Dragon or Armsmaster, they might have something." he said while continuing his maintenance work.

"Oh, almost forgot you know Leet has.. or had one, he's gone out dressed as things that have shields before."

I... I almost forgot about Leet being around, Leet and Uber aren't really a focus in the story as they tend to stick to the sidelines. I think they only got involved in the main storyline during the Bakuda bombing thing as mercenaries going up against the Undersiders briefly.

Bliznak, Leet is a treasure trove for me, the Tinker who can build anything once and also the Tinker whose shard is trying to murder him for playing it safe. That… brings up a good point, is my power an actual parahuman one? If it's shard-based and pseudo-sentient is it going to try and kill me if I'm not actively in danger enough?

Kid Win and the other Wards seem to be doing ok with just the normal Ward duties. Guess the patrols, combat practice and fighting the occasional random normal criminal (and rarely the parahuman ones) generates enough conflict to satisfy hungry shards. Guess I shouldn't worry too much about that right now.

Leeeeeett-tech, I was practically drooling over the things he's probably made and broken. It made me regret joining the wards instead of trying to find them and joining, but to be fair, I didn't know I might have had an actual parahuman power besides "Stitch" at the time. Leet's tinker shard had access to.. well everything tinkertech that I could imagine. I could just about...

"Six-Two-Six! stop drooling on my schematics"

Oh, how embarrassing.

"Sorry"

I cleaned up as best as I could, using my lab coat sleeves while I plotted my dastardly plan to gain access to Leets tech.

"You're drooling again!"

Bliznak!

* * *

"I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree then director, I've got to go. But i'll make sure to ask him and I'll tell him about your offer too."

She slammed the phone down into the receiver before muttering under her breath. She was livid that the news of the new parahuman didn't even make it a week before someone squealed to the other directors.

"Fuck you too asshole."

Bellowing at her secretary in the next room, "Get Armsmaster, Miss Militia and Six-Two-Six in conference room six in ten minutes."

The last thing I needed was the other directors breathing down my neck. If I find out who squealed I'm going to make patrolling a Simurgh zone look like a fucking vacation!

"Miss Militia is out on patrol, Armsmaster and Six-Two-Six are on their way" came the shouted reply a few minutes later.

"Fine, just the two then." As Piggot angrily got up and, stretched briefly as the stabbing pains in her sides and back flared up and headed out to the conference room.

* * *

Piggot calmed herself before pressing the record button and starting. "We're recording this just so you both know. The other directors are of course up in arms complaining about how we now have three tinkers in house. Armsmaster and Kid Win are both settled in and have homes and lives and so forth. Six-Two-Six, I'm sorry to say but you'll probably have to be transferred."

The weird four-armed blue koala like cape sat there for a few seconds before drumming his claws on the desk.

"Questa," it said before continuing, "I'd rather not"

"I'm not being given much of a choice either. This is coming down from up high, the demand for tinkers in other cities is just too high to have so many of them in one city. They were forced to let us keep Kid Win since he's underage and has family here, and was unwilling to transfer."

She took a breath and a few seconds to let that sink in "That being said, they are willing to double your base pay, double your trust fund and give you your own lab. You can basically pick which city you want to go to. Los Angeles in particular has strongly requested your presence, you would be working directly under one of the triumvirate there."

"I'm not interested in transferring!" Its ears folded back and stuck tightly against its head as it growled and slammed two of its hands down on the table, gouging and denting it. The antenna on its forehead bobbing around a little.

I just grinned from the side, "So you're formally protesting the transfer then?"

It perked it's ears up, swiveling them a bit to the sides and stared with its large black eyes blinking slowly for a second before replying, "Feeboogoo yes!"

A smile creeped up on my face, finally a bit of good news for once. "So you're refusing the offers of doubling your pay to stay here?"

It growled and jumped up onto the table, flashing its teeth at the camera and me and shouted "Bata naba gata, Yes!"

I can work with this, transfers are largely dependent on the willingness of the cape in question. With endless budget cuts and few capes willing to transfer into Brockton Bay, Six-two-six had been an unexpected boon. First recognizable as simply one of the most pleasant-looking and downright adorable case 53's found, she though that maybe he'd just give them a good shot of PR, have him pose for children and do interviews. Then the power testing came and she knew she'd hit the jackpot, high-end super strength, brute resistance and tinker abilities. I'll take ten more of those please, the recruitment bonus towards budgets alone was substantial for acquiring high end capes.

For once, in years the budgets across the board had been increased, especially once his mass-producible tinkertech started production. Brockton Bay PRT received a small portion of the production costs for each one produced under the PRT-tinkertech ownership agreement.

"Alright, I'll have someone send your reply immediately, go ahead and go back to whatever you were doing before." and stopped recording.

Alexandria will just have to choke on that refusal.

It hopped off of the table and headed out, I motioned for Armsmaster to stay and waited a few minutes for Six-Two-Six to leave the area.

"Any progress with that?"

He stiffened up and the slightest bit of a grimace crossed his face. "It doesn't seem to match any language on record. The blood and DNA results came back, he does have DNA but not even a fraction of it is human or even terrestrial in origin. A banana tree as an example has roughly 60% genes similar to a humans, just about everything on earth uses the same proteins and other fundamental building blocks for essential chemical reactions. His genes... well lets just say that he shares less then one percent. The blood results are similarly strange resulting in an "unknown" blood type. As a quick example, he's not using Hemoglobin or Hemocyanin as the oxygen carrier."

"So a northeastern united states accent, a foreign, unrecognizable language, an alien biology and no identifiable tattoo. Strange for even a case fifty three. See if you can crack that language at least, low priority though, quietly."

"Also, Armsmaster good work on the Shadow Stalker case, she's taking the deal. She should be here in a few days once the lawyers are finished hashing out the final bits and pieces."

The video was sent out a few minutes later.

* * *

"Armsmaster!" I said while chasing behind him down the hallway. One of his rare appearances in between his "Don't disturb me while this light is on" lab, in which he never bothers turning the light off and "out on patrol".

"Yes," he said in a clipped tone. Probably headed out to patrol and moody about it, or maybe he likes going on patrol to relieve some tension. It's hard to tell with him.

"Can I look through some of your schematics or designs for some of the things you've designed or improved?"

That got him to stop rushing down the hallway. Oh, wow I didn't think he could frown that hard or glare that much with his eyes behind that visor.

"I'm looking for some shields, and general ideas for tinkering projects." I hurriedly specified

"I can't give you access to everything as many things are extremely dangerous. But I can give you access to some defensive technologies." he snapped.

"Can you ask Dragon for the same?" I asked in my sweetest, sappiest voice.

"Yes," he said while subtly gritting his teeth. Wonder what I did to irritate him.

"Thank you! Armsmaster, you're the best!" and gave him a thumbs up.

He nodded slightly at the praise and continued on his way, Choota.


	9. Chapter 9

"Ladies and gentlemen and I do mean that in the loosest sense of the word, can I have your attention, please? Down here, yes I am very short and blue. I am aware of that fact thank you. I have been hounded by Piggot until she annoyed me enough to give you all a little group presentation on how to use the tinkertech weapons I've created. Frankly, I have neither the time the patience nor the crayons to explain this to all of you. But I'll try my best to give you all the basics of how to not kill yourselves while using them. This will just be a quick little demo of the Plasma Pistol and the Plasma Assault Rifle. As the Brockton Bay PRT department has received the first shipment of my mass produced tinker tech guns, you are the first PRT officers who get to use them, congratulations. With a lot of luck and these helpful safety tips, some of you will survive the week. In relevant news, the Darwin awards will be given out the same time as this conference next Saturday for the most creative suicidal mistakes, I'm sure that we will have some notable late entries this year."

"For both the Pistol and the Rifle you must remember to point it downrange or away from things you don't want to explode, flick the safety off and fire just like most other guns. The safety and power adjustment controls you can see are right next to where your huge ugly monkey thumbs rest. Yes, I can hear you talking about me in the back of the room, the ears are not for decoration they **are** fully functional. I must also compliment you on your bravery, I certainly would not be able to face the public if I looked like you. The next time I visit the zoo I'll shake the primate cage and tell your mother that you said hi and that you're doing about as well as could be expected. Now, you have various power settings to choose from, the details of what each setting does and how it impacts the discharge rate of the gun is covered in the manual much like the entirety of this presentation, I made the manual with colorful bright pictures so that most of you can understand it. I suggest reading it or at least looking at the pictures."

"Some questions have arisen about how to change out the magazine. Some less intelligent people have already tried to change out the non-existent magazine with a hammer, it did not go well for them. We can all hope that the brain transplant is successful and they will return to work as someone else. The simple answer is that there is no magazine and when it's out of ammo just grab another gun and stick the empty one on the charger so it can recharge."

"Do not, and I repeat do not look down the barrel when you think you might have clogged it with something. If you have clogged the barrel up with something do not fire the gun to try and clear it. It will NOT work and will cause the gun to explode in your hands. If the gun makes some fast paced beeping noises or starts to swell up, get rid of it quickly and run away. Do not play hot potato with your friend or partner. However, feel free to lob it at your enemies feet so that it explodes with them in the general vicinity."

"The guns are watertight and only need to be shaken while pointed down a little to drain the water out of the barrel itself before usage. The remaining water inside of the barrel will not impact the guns performance. When you inevitably drop the gun in the toilet do not ask me to clean it, it can be cleaned with common rubbing alcohol, make sure that the gun's safety is on before you clean it. Yes, you in the back, the one that was insulting me under your breath. I would recommend that you use your tongue on the inside of the barrel and check that the trigger works by pulling it several times, you will be less of a disappointment as a Picasso painting on your wall."

"I can't believe I also have to mention this but since we already have a near fatality in the hospital, here it goes. Please, under no circumstances should you insert either weapon into an orifice or insert your genitals into the weapons. Judging from the noises a few days ago, it is extremely painful when the gun goes off and you become technically eligible for the Darwin award for the swift removal of your own reproductive organs. Now, I've been asked to not mention any names of the individual involved, but we do have a get well card located in the back on the small table for Greg. The get well card is in no way implying that Greg shot his reproductive organs off, he has been admitted to the hospital for completely unrelated reasons due to a very recent injury which occurred a few days ago. With luck, Panacea will be able to attend him and full functionality will unfortunately be restored."

"Thank you for wasting my time, good luck."

* * *

Defensive tech… Armsmaster didn't send much. More utterly useless power armor for me, what's the point If I'm vastly stronger than the power armor is and I'd have to spend days re-engineering it to work with four arms _and_ have to resize it significantly to fit. All that additional maintenance and work when I could just toss on some super-thick body armor instead and not be impeded by it, super-strength is awesome and makes power armor redundant.

It is, however significantly better than Triumph's power armor that Kid Win was working on, it doesn't hurt to grab it I guess. It ended up combining with the " **basic power armor** " to form " **Power Armor** " it was more generalized and far more flexible than the "basic" stuff as several of the other technologies started "playing" with it in the back of my head, integrating Lasers and additional power sources into it. A couple seconds of thought and I had a version that would actually fit me including the extra arms designed out. Still, it was hard to justify spending any time making it, maybe just the armor portion and strip out the "strength-enhancement" servos and hydraulics...

Dragon sent a much better selection of things. Designs for the long range foam sprayers. Which aren't actually tinkertech but it's fairly easy to see that as being a good weapon choice to send out to ward-tinkers so they had something non-lethal and proven to work. Even more interesting was the fact that even though it wasn't tinkertech a few seconds of concentration and it popped in as just a plain schematic unhindered by any DRM and floated around just like the federation tech. There was a design for a small dog-like drone which was pretty cool, but as far as I could tell it was useless for just about everything except scouting, however the technology behind it gave me **Small Drones**.

The other tinkertech designs went wild, suddenly spewing out various combinations of things including a lethal Laser-drone, foam drones, Nonlethal fed-tech drones, etc. Nearly all of the variants had the **Micro Generators** in them. Also included in Dragons designs where a bunch of other minor things like a visor/helmet heads-up display unit with built-in communication radio and various sensors for **Holographic Display,** **Communications** and **Sensors** respectively. A tinkertech wrist-mounted computer with built-in screen gave out **Micro Computers** and **High Definition Displays.** Looking over the tinkertech CPU's designs I couldn't help but think that it probably grated on Dragon nerves, the tinkertech CPU was significantly better than anything on the market but she was strictly limited by her software when such incredible hardware was available.

The various designs became a flurry of design work as they churned out variations and upgrades to the current designs. The drones became significantly more "intelligent" with the improved tinkertech CPU's from the wrist mounted computer. The wrist mounted computer gained a superior display with the Holographic Display tech mounted in it and nearly unlimited run time with a single Micro Generator stuffed into it. The spaceships benefited too as they were upgraded to holographic displays, improved computers, additional sensors (which I could actually build). The power armor started to actually look like it might be useful with the additional tech as it integrated into it as well.

I sent a thank you email to both of them.

* * *

"Mwahaha!" I've done it, sliding it onto my back, grabbing the controls with my two lower hands and then sucking them into my body so that nothing would interfere with the controls when in flight.

"Wha.. holy crap, is that a _jet pack_?" asked Kid Win, looking up from his own project before immediately dropping it and walking over to have a look.

"Well, it doesn't really work using jet engines. But yes, yes it is my fellow Tinker. This baby is capable of just under Mach one, can hover in place and can run for about two days without needing to be refueled."

"I want one!"

"Of course, I'll make one for you next, after all, what's a tinker without a jetpack? I need some help, can you look into a side or back attachment that'll let me connect some of my guns to it like a magnetic holster? Oh, maybe even charge them up while attached. I just need the designs, I can do the actual building."

Kid Win looked at me funny before turning his head slightly to one side "Wait.. did you just suck your lower arms into your body?"

Oh.. bliznak I forgot that I hadn't shown anyone that and here I am with a jetpack that uses both lower arms to control it while they are sucked in. Ugh, now I'm going to have to change the controls around too.

"Hm, oh yes I did. You know it's like really uncomfortable to do, like sucking in your gut all the time. But I figured it's better to have the controls in where they can't get messed with while I'll flying around."

I coughed and continued

"Anyways, can you make designing the magnetic latching couplers for the guns a priority, please? The media event thing is supposed to be happening in a few days. The final, bullet and fire-resistant costume is coming tomorrow and I have to strip, prep and powder-coat the guns and the jetpack to match the color scheme before the press event. Four arms unfortunately does not mean that the powder-coat layers cook faster."

"I get a jetpack afterward?"

"Of course" it all comes down to the jetpacks, no one can resist the jetpack.

* * *

Kid Win came through, and I rushed integrating **Modular Magnetic Couplings** into my guns and the jetpack. I was only using it for the convenient magnetic-latching effect that it utilized which included security to make sure that only the user was able to remove the guns, but it did look really cool with the guns just clinging to the jetpack's sides. I was also reintroduced to the power-testing people, thank you Kid Win for immediately reporting that, I really needed a few more hours of power testing.

Ugh

* * *

"Introducing Our latest Ward, Six-Two-Six!"

No firing the guns into the air or ceiling, no flying in with the jetpack.. spoilsports.

Instead, I put on my best impression of the kool-aid man and punched my way through the brick wall next to the stage. Showering everyone in brick dust and brick fragments while cackling madly…

I can dream, right?

 _Sigh._

I just walked on stage from the side and climbed up the footstool behind the podium, having just barely managing to get the costume together in time, complete with Jetpack and magnetic-latching "holsters" for the guns.

I leaned over the podium into the microphone and looked out at all of the people looking at me. I suddenly became way more conscious of looking like a weird koala-dog thing in front of all of these people. I could see all of there faces at the same time while they moved around in their chairs, the fabric of their clothes sounding like sandpaper rubbing together as the whole crowd moved and shifted.

Someone coughed in the audience and one of the PRT officers offstage whispered to another, "He's freezing up."

I don't remember the lines, oh bliznak what were my lines. Why can't I remember my lines, I have a perfect memory, where the hell is the speech at in here? Didn't I read it? Oh god, it's like a nightmare, I'm messing this up.

Bliznak, move the mouth, say something!

"HHE HHHHEEEII! I'm cute and FLUFFY!" while waving with a hand.

There, innocuous and positive but not the five-minute speech they had given me. Yes, evildoers beware, the cute and fluffy Six-Two-Six is now "officially" in the Wards. I hate public speaking.

*FLASH*

Ahh! Argg! Irritating flashing bulbs everywhere blinding me, fantastic.I wanted to throw the podium at them so badly a portion of the wooden podium splintered under my hands.

*FLASH*

Ok, Ok calm down, just answer a few softball questions from the press and then move onto the meet and greet.

One of the press reporters asks, "So, what is your power?"

"Yes, next question" I replied, "sweating" under the fur and the red and yellow costume. It's rather hot in here isn't it.

The small group of reporters looked at each other briefly before looking over at one of the PRT officers who helpfully came over and handled them for me.

I took that as my cue to get off the stage and go to the next portion of pressing the flesh and meeting the public. Shake hands…. yes, so many hands.

"You can let go now." said one man, whose name I didn't seem to catch.

"Oh. hmm sorry." I replied and let go, had I been shaking his hand for the last minute or two?

Bliznak I'm messing this up so badly.. It's all falling apart! I need to get out of here…

I think I went through the wall in my hasty exit to go outside to the PRT van. The driver wasn't there but I knew how to drive. The pedals... why are the pedals so far away.. going to have to adjust them.

* * *

"Where did the van go?"

"Huh, did you park it on the other side of the building maybe?"

"I don't think there is a parking lot on the other side."

"Alright, call it in"


	10. Chapter 10

I face-palmed when we watched the video of my interview/introduction later while the other wards laughed. I got up on the podium, actually standing up on top of it instead of standing on the stool behind it. Stared at everyone in the crowd without blinking for a solid, silent minute before leaning over into the microphone clawing the air and saying.

"HHE HHHHEEEII! I'm cute and FLUFFY!"

Before going silent again, while still holding the "clawing-the-air" pose for another minute. The photographers started taking pictures and a lower hand went down and tore off a chunk of the podium, the photographers quickly stopped flashing me and then the reporter asked his question. I shook one person's hand and then wouldn't let him go until he mentioned it and then bolted, running straight through a wall.

Ok, it was pretty funny.

The PRT van is now officially "mine" so long as I get a drivers license to use it. If they tried to repair the van the cost of the repairs exceed the value of the van itself. Technically that means I totaled the vehicle, even though I didn't hit, scratch or ding anything and the van runs just fine. It's just that no one else can drive it because I used the security gate inside of it as new pieces of metal to extend the pedals upwards and create a new me-sized seat in it, tearing out the old one and wrapping the metal around the seat pedestal.

I'm going to have it painted red with flames on the side. Shame that I'm not planning on keeping it for too long, I've got a spaceship design to work on.

A day later and the PR event is now a meme online with a still shot from the video of me clawing the air. It has the "I'm cute and fluffy" caption under it. Also, a photograph of me going through the wall is the "NOPE" meme.

That didn't stop me from using the cute and fluffy one as my profile picture on PHO, though. I can laugh at myself.

Someone posted the entire original introduction-failure video online, it apparently went up just hours after the interview and it has a disturbingly large amount of views. Clockblocker showed me where it was on the youtube like video service.

Ending up doing a one-on-one interview later with another reporter, which became the official introduction video. Sadly, while preparing for the interview, I also discovered that alcohol had no effect on me.

* * *

Yay, jetpack number two and number three are done. One to Kid Win for his assistance and the other for PRT testers to use, I'm currently not allowed to use my own jetpack until it goes through testing. Which sucks, but the good news is that everything I produce is now "high priority" and usually comes back within a day or so. Later that same tester-jetpack will be shipped out as the mass production example and tear-down. The jet packs are significantly more expensive to build then the guns, several thousand dollars worth of aviation grade aluminum and titanium alloys machined to tight tolerances on the CNC machine, High temp valves, tiny Hydraulic cylinders and stabilizing electronics and gyros are all crammed into it.

Still mass producible, just expensive from a materials, precision machining and time standpoint.

Shame, I'm running low on things I can build from the federation schematics, I think the next one I'll build is going to be the RPG-like cannons which can level buildings in a single shot.

Bet they're going to like that.

High powered shoulder mounted laser cannons for everyone! Mwahaha!

With luck, they might even scratch an endbringer so that normal people can feel like they are helping too.

I also finally got my own lab chocked full of shiny new machines, even a bunch of Tinkertech building equipment and more mundane things like CNC machines, pick and place machines, solder baths, 3D metal printers, lithography equipment.

Shiny shiny new tinkertech computers and a TV with huge screens line one wall.

Weee!

I even purchased a set of singing tesla coils to play music through, I have it set to play the beginning of the imperial march when someone walks through the door.

The best part, the furniture is all sized to me including a bathroom, shower and a new bedroom and a small kitchenette in the corner. It's basically set up to be like Armsmaster's lab/room.

It's almost like they want me to stay inside for some reason, hah.

* * *

"So the cute and fluffy ward wants to look over some of my things does he?" said the skinner armored one, Leet in some generic power-armor of course.

Contacting the criminal duo was easy, I had an official PHO account and they had verified PHO accounts. A quick message about contacting them offline got me a phone number and I just... "borrowed" a PRT officers cell phone.

"Yes, I think I might be able to.. fix other tinkers works or copy them." I could tell that interested him.

"Thattt'sss fairly promising, but what do we get out of this?"

"I figured, if that I am able to produce working versions of your personal shield. I would happily repay you with two working models of what I make."

"Three"

"No, that's unreasonable. There's two of you so I understand the need for two of them. If you want spares we can work out some other deal later on. Sneaking out two devices and covering up the materials used is going to be difficult as is. All the materials are coming out of my tinker budget anyways." Which at this point was positively huge and I'm pretty sure was now bigger than Armsmaster's budget.. for the past several years combined. The pistols and rifles were already in mass production and jetpacks were apparently right behind them, I received a significant portion of the profit from each tinkertech device sold. I also had a bank account that was quickly swelling up.

I wouldn't be surprised if Alexandria and the Number Man were involved and were intentionally swelling my PRT-budget to see what else I could come up with for the PRT, Protectorate, and Cauldron.

"What ab-"

"Look, you're taking no risks here and spending no money, your stuff is already broken. I'm not even sure if I can make copies of broken things yet. I'm the one who's taking all of the risks, spending the time and effort and paying for materials. I just want to try the shields first and maybe some medical tinker things if you have any of that. Even if I get caught I don't think anyone's going to complain too much about defensive tinker gear."

Leet signed, "Alright, but you need to appear on our show sometime."

"Fine, I am a Ward though so nothing that might get me into too much trouble. This deal is just for the shields, future things will get different terms if this works out."

They _really_ liked the mass-producible shoulder mounted laser cannons. I was also promptly banned from using them unless it was an emergency. I admit I was having an awful lot of fun with it while flying around in my jetpack and blowing things up in the ship graveyard for the demonstration and may have been laughing maniacally while blowing up the ships. I went ahead and switched over to the shield project after making a few of the shoulder mounted cannons.

I wanted the Leet-shield for several reasons, first it's defensive technology. Even if I got caught with it and someone recognized it as Leets no-one's going to put up a big stink about it. It's technology the PRT already had, though on a smaller scale than the base-sized shields. Finally, it's technology _**I**_ already had, though it was sized for the large federation ships and I couldn't produce it. I wanted to find out what happens specifically if I tried to push the Leet-tech shield and the federation shield tech together.

Leet didn't have any written schematics for the broken shield generator but I found that it was fairly easy to pick up a mental schematic of the device by disassembling it, picking up **Personal shields**. I pushed it into the federation-tech ship-sized shields. Interestingly enough with only a little bit of resistance it combined to form a generalized " **Shields** " tech, leaving a copy of the original federation-shield tech alone.

With my new sudden understanding of Shield-tech It was interesting to see the parts which looked like they were intentionally sabotaged in Leet's personal shield, a few circuits that couldn't handle the loads they were carrying, a few that put out higher voltages than what was required. The most dangerous part was that the shield emitters themselves were oversized and misaligned which created self-destructive overlapping fields, each usage put an increasing strain on the device as the emitters interfered with each other and damaged themselves every time they were used.

Looking deeper into " **Shields** " it now had a split-tech appearance where the larger purely-federation tech shields could still be mass produced using it (if I had the nonexistent materials and manufacturing capacity that is). The smaller shields which relied on Leet's version was however still all locked up with the shard-induced DRM.

The weird part was that I could also produce the larger federation-ship sized shields using Leet's DRM locked parts. As in, I could build it today with the materials I had in the lab. The DRM on the hybrid tech looked... thinner, it seemed to be hiding less of the actual mechanics of the shield and seemed to be borrowing the unlocked and unshielded portions of the federation tech whenever possible.

So starting with the larger hybrid version I shrank that down into a personal shield. It worked, It was still locked up by the DRM but... I think I just greatly improved the reliability and significantly reduced the maintenance issues.

My my, It seems I stumbled upon something, the shards were probably adding in additional maintenance issues just to make tinkers less effective.

I mentally "Poked" the tinker-DRM to try and tear it off of the smaller hybrid schematics and sighed as it stayed stubbornly latched on, hiding the actual method that the shield effect is produced as it simply whispered instructions to follow instead. Oh well, this will be the first bit of actual tinker-tech I'm going to produce then.

I quickly put the now non-sabotaged, hybrid, personal shield down on paper before heading over to Armsmaster's lab to see if he could improve it. The shield unit was originally the size of a small paperback book, it'd be nice if he could shrink it down a bit.

Of course I didn't expect him to drag me off into an interrogation room.

* * *

"What does Bliznak mean?"

"Bliznak?"

"Bliznak"

"What do you mean? Bliznak is bliznak."

"Describe it"

"Uhh...ok, Bliznak comes out of the rear end, people use it for fertilizer, it stinks..?"

"You are describing fecal matter then?"

"Uh.. yeah"

"Say feces."

"Umm... Bliznak."

"say crap"

"Bliznak"

"I see, you must be unaware that you are not speaking English for some words."

"What?"

"Yes, you are saying B-L-I-Z-N-A-K, not shit or crap or feces."

"I am?"

"Yes, now what does Questa mean to you, define it."

"Umm.. bad word.. unmake something .. No.. mating!... no... it's supposed to be a foul word, the worst. If I'm not speaking english.. then it's like the F-word, but.. the meaning is different I think. I think I might use it for both…"

"Toobaga?"

"Umm.. opposite of smart."

"Alright, now how about something more complex. Yur Porma Dissy"

"Wha.. what did you say?'

"Yur Porma Dissy"

"Meega Nala Questa!"

"Six-Two-Six, what are you.. put the conference table down!"

A loud thud echoes around the room

"No..! Put me down Six-Two-Six!"

Muffled sounds of fighting and things breaking start up.

The director shut off the recording and rubbed her temples, "You two idiots leveled that room, the tables, the chairs, the walls, the CEILING!" she rounded on the adult first. His armored body dinged up, scratched and dented in several places and an imprint of a small pawlike hand was bent into the armored boot.

"Armsmaster, I told you to investigate the language. Try to find out what language on your own, not interrogate him about it!"

Armaster frowned, the lower half of his face showing under the cracked half-face faceplate and replied, "My research on the language brought up nothing, I even requested help from Dragon who was also found nothing. Directly asking him about the language was the fastest and most likely way of getting some information."

"I don't care, I wanted you to do it quietly. It was a low priority! " spat the director before rounding on the smaller blue dog-like thing.

"Goddamn, it Six-Two-Six! **YOU** and your overreaction to his question were unwarranted. I expect better from you! I'm taking the repairs out of your pay!" she said while slamming her hands down on her desk making the blue furred parahuman jump slightly.

Six-Two-Six pointed at the taller armored man with two hands "He said..."

"Grow up! It should have been obvious that he was asking about what it meant! Just because someone calls you a bad name or something does not mean you get to throw them through a _fucking_ wall!" with her face now red the director sucked in a bit of breath to calm herself, her color returning after a few seconds.

"Six-Two-Six you're suspended for two weeks. Now, get the _Hell_ out of my office and go to your _Goddamn_ room!" The director's voice rising throughout until she was screaming at the end and red-faced once more.

The dog like parahuman nearly jumped out of his seat and hurried out of the office.

They both waited in silence for a minute or two before Armsmaster nodded after checking his display.

The director continued. "Don't worry, nothing about this will be tarnishing your record. Just had to pass a little blame to you _verbally_ to make it seem like a lesser issue overall. Yelling and screaming is cheap, word from up high is to keep him happy, keep him tinkering."

She tapped on her desk with a few fingers "Otherwise good job on getting some of the language down. The Little bastard has apparently been running around cursing at everyone the whole time."

* * *

Wait, did she just sentence me to two weeks of no patrols in my lab?

Should... should I destroy **more** things?


	11. Chapter 11

"I'd like all of you to welcome your new teammate Shadowstalker." said Armsmaster before he turned around and promptly left.

What... Really... Armsmaster… here's your new teammate, bye?

How about a "play nicely" and a pat on the head at least?

I'm not sure if I should feel _violated_ by watching him try to interact with people. I'm better than him and I don't really care about what other people think about me. Ontop of that, most of my social interaction with the rest of the Wards is 'sit on the couch and cram my head into someone's side until they start petting me' or lay down on someone's lap until they start petting me.

Vista squealed with joy and jumped off the couch, dislodging me from my seat beside her and bounced up and down in the middle of the room, "Yes! Yes! another girl! Finally!"

The cape in question snorted dismissively at the bundle of energy formerly known as Vista and walked over to the couch and sat down on the exact spot Vista had just vacated, next to me. Where Vista had just been sitting and rubbing my back, head and ears while watching Saturday morning cartoons.

Well, guess that's my cue to leave, "So sorry I have to cut this meet and greet short, but I'm working on something delicate in the lab. Anyways, nice to meet you Shadowstalker." before running out of the room as well.

Ugh, I was enjoying that petting... I mean head massage.

All my hate for you Shadowstalker, I love pet-massage time and you just cut it short.

* * *

Armsmaster was secretly pleased, looking over the latest schematic that Six-Two-Six brought to him before the " _incident_ ". Incredibly useful, the plans for the portable shield generator would increase his own defensive capability significantly. However, far more important was the fact that these plans showed a standard tinker device, a non-mass-producible tinker shield. His own tinker abilities worked just fine on it, improving its design even further, reducing the power requirements and increasing its durability.

Not only would it be fairly easy to add into his own armor but he could also add it into some of his peripheral and ancillary devices. His motorbike for one could use a nice shield, maybe a backup shield unit in his halberd...

no, no, that would require too much power to…

Colin sighed and got to work.

* * *

Sparring session with the new team member, _nope_.

I'm "busy"

"Mandatory" team sparring with the new member.

"Oh my god, stop hitting the door it's going to blow up unless I concentrate on this!"

Increase music volume, work on the police cruiser.

Someone started pounding on the door. **Bang Bang Bang** "Six-two-six get out here! You need to exercise and participate in team building exercises! I know you can hear me over that music!"

I shouted back, "I'm busy now, can I ignore you some other time?"

Apparently I'm also neck and neck this week with Armsmaster for the most-time-spent-in-lab.

* * *

After toweling off, I walked over to look in the mirror and brushed my teeth. Honestly, I wasn't sure if I needed to brush, but a lifetime of habits still made it feel weird not to. Though being able to brush my head-fur at the same time with the other arms made up for the additional time, it took drying my fur with the towel. It's been weeks and I still smelled like that old-spice cologne, it seems to be my "natural" scent though it did lead to some awkward moments when people would audibly sniff at me.

My BO is old spice and I'm not sure how I feel about that, guess I shouldn't complain about it.

With all of the activity going on in the past few weeks I'm sure some of my paperwork was "delayed" intentionally. Unfortunately, after the PR event (and likely the reason why the PR event was delayed as well) they couldn't pretend to not to have the paperwork finished.

So off to school I go.

 _Joy._

I thought about requesting to going to Winslow for about a minute before nixing it. Sorry Taylor but Winslow is a dump and you do need awesome, underestimated bug powers. Something that a lot of people seem to miss is just how much abuse it took to get her to trigger. Her mother's death didn't cause her to trigger, being emotionally abused and bullied for a year didn't cause her to trigger. No, it took her almost dying, trapped in a tiny locker filled with biological waste products to trigger her powers, If I did "save" her before the locker event it's unlikely that she would ever trigger, thus removing one of the linchpins of the original timeline.

Frankly, I'm just going to leave that whole mess alone, for now, maybe do something after she triggers, maybe make an anonymous phone call to get her discovered earlier and see If I can't get Shadow Stalker kicked out of the wards. I know I'm a horrible asshole for not doing anything to prevent it, but she is the one who eventually takes on Scion and kills him, her power is needed. Maybe get her a cake or something...

Sorry, you've been tormented for a year and put into the hospital then slipped into a power or injury-induced coma, here's a _cake_.

Hah

On second thought showing up at the hospital while she is in the coma might actually be a good idea, get some PR pointed at her. Maybe do a one-on-one interview and request a favor from the news station in exchange to do a report on school bullying and point them at the in-a-coma Taylor. It'd be an interesting way to get introduced to her, by the time she even wakes up they might even have discovered who did it... with a bit of nudging and anonymous phone calls of course.

* * *

Plenty of people came up to me and greeted me at school, I also had a brief tour of the facility before being introduced to the homeroom teacher. And wow, school is now even more boring than it was the first time, first day at class and I've read through each book and memorized them instantly, thank you eidetic memory. The stares are a bit unnerving as people stopped to watch me walk down the hall and conversations froze at my approach as people noticed me.

Lunch smelled pretty good and the scent of it drove me crazy, I could smell it throughout the entire school. I guess this is how a dog must feel, smelling food for hours but unable to eat it. I must give my sympathies to my fur-covered brethren, I understand your _anguish_ now.

As the lunch period actually arrived, I had to crawl up the side of the display and walked on top of the tray-carrier to see anything, but that made it fairly easy to hand over the tray to be filled at least. Though I'm not sure if that's because of my different taste buds which seemed to be disturbingly indiscriminate about what constitutes "food" or if it's just that Arcadia **is** a better public school than the one I grew up with and simply has a higher budget for everything including the food.

I spotted Victoria and Amy Dallon, well I spotted the softly glowing Glory Girl seated at a table and assumed the other female next to her was her "sister" Amy. Of course they had a bunch of people in front of them at the table. Interesting enough as I got closer I couldn't feel any effect from her "aura" at all. Not that I'm complaining mind you but after Gallant's beams I was expecting to feel something.

Come to think of it I don't think her aura worked on Bitch's dogs or on Skitters insects when she was at the bank. Maybe it's an effect just limited to humans, which is a bit depressing to think about.

"Hhhiiii, your Glory Girl and Panacea right?" I finally said after I made my way over to them, with only half the lunchroom watching me. I know, I'm just so eloquent speaking in front of crowds.

'Amy' looked incredibly uncomfortable as she caught sight of me heading towards me and shrunk back against her sister, "I'm sorry I can't..."

Glory girl's aura increased in brightness as Amy retreated away from me and got closer to her sister.

"What I can't sit here?" as I hopped up on the bench seat and put my tray down on the table

"No I can't... fix you" Amy replied tiredly

"I assure you that I'm uninterested in being neutered." I replied with a disapproving look at her.

Glory Girl started with a chuckle, looked at my face and quickly broke out into an all-out laugh and pounded the table with a fist.

"No" she replied, obviously flustered "I can't make case fifty-three's human again, I've already tried."

"Why would I want to look like a boring human, I'm a cute and adorable blue ball of fluff." I said and widened my eyes and pressed my hands together and looked shy and mildly sad.

Glory Girl snorted and said, "That's just disgustingly cute, you look like a blue koala in need of a hug. Do you need a _hhhuuuggg_?" she said mockingly.

I stopped posing and replied "Well that's somewhat close to the problem I'm having. Joined the Wards, of course. But I can't hang out with… well, I'm sure you can guess. But they are the only ones I know, so I need to make some friends while avoiding the cape groupies when possible."

Honestly, I could give a Bliznak about anyone else in this school. I'm being selfish and an asshole I know, but I didn't really want to waste my time on befriending teenagers. However, I might need Glory Girl and Panacea's help in the future once I figured out what I wanted to do. Best to have them as friends even if I never end up having to ask for favors.

I continued "It's not like I can hide behind a mask and have a life separate from cape activities like the other wards, a situation which I've been told is similar to yourselves." I said while sitting down and promptly realizing that I couldn't reach the food tray like this.

As I awkwardly stood up on the bench seat to reach the tray and food. I continued "Anyways, I'm Six-Two-Six a brute-tinker mix or so they say in the PRT. Only been here for a couple of weeks, woke up in an alley and remembered Brockton bay so I headed here. See, look you already know my entire life story."

I pointed at them with two hands, "So was I right then? You're the dynamic duo, The Super Girl and the Super Healer, the Guts and the Glory. Also known as Glory Girl and Panacea."

Glory Girl placed a finger on her chin and replied, "Guts and the Glory.. never heard that one before.. I like that. Anyways, yeah I'm Victoria and my sister is Amy."

"Pleasure to meet you two, I hope we can be friends." I stuck out a paw for both of them and got to enjoy seeing Panacea's eyes light up in wonder as she shook my hand and then didn't let go for an uncomfortable amount of time.

Glory Girl grinned as she shook my other hand and squeezed it hard, "Sooo... you're a brute, right? you wanna have some fun sometime?"

"Sure, so long as I get to use some of the toys I've built." I grinned back, Squeezing her hand in return and increased the pressure until her shield flared up brightly. Fun for her is definitely going to be a fight.

Amy relaxed and sat next to me while we all started eating food. Some small talk, introduction to their other friends and "Dean" who 'I have never' met before. I answered some questions and let them touch my fur and so forth (ladies can't help themselves what can I say?).

The initial greetings do tend to be awkward when you're nonhuman and the questions boil down to, how does your fur feel, how does it feel to have four arms... etc.

Or in Clockblockers case, "can you sniff your own butt, do you want to sniff mine?"

After lunch it was just one short class before heading back to headquarters, the Wards only had only partial school days thankfully.

* * *

On second thought, Questa school, that thing just wastes too much of my time. I'll just make arrangements to get my GED instead. I'm sure Piggott will be happy and I've already got what I wanted, Glory Girls and Pancea's personal cell phone numbers.

I could probably have gotten them from "Dean" though... ehh. It was still nice to meet them!

Hmm, better text them about the GED idea and see if they want to hang out sometime and go punch something with Glory Girl, bet Panacea will enjoy firing a cannon at some rusting ships.

Hang out now?

Ok.

I'll bring guns

* * *

Panacea enjoyed firing guns at the ships too much… and starting shooting things that were not ships. Now we get to evade the police and the PRT which is fairly easy to do in the air usually. Unfortunately, now some of the PRT Officers are using my jetpacks, wow this has turned into a great day!

Note to self, make my jetpack faster than the PRT jetpacks and stop trying to collapse sewers while you're running through them, that's a bad habit.


	12. Chapter 12

Grinning I passed over the two personal shield units over to Leet and Uber, each one about the size of a deck of cards.

"Almost doubled the performance of them too, they'll easily tank RPG's and nearly unlimited amounts of conventional bullets. It's regenerative like the original one was, so even after they collapse from too much damage they'll recharge after a few seconds of down time."

Grinning I placed the original one on the table and slid it over to them, "Also fixed the original one it's basically the same as it was, minus the chance of explosions."

Leet looked over the shields, pulling out a set of screwdrivers before disassembling one of them carefully. He was probably checking to make sure I didn't sneak in any GPS or tracking circuitry, I know I would.

After a few minutes of silence while he worked, "It's legit" he proclaimed.

I scoffed, stood up on the chair seat and leaned over the edge of the table and quietly said, "Of course it is, I do have to think about life outside of the wards after all. Their rules are stifling and I don't plan on being with them for too long. But I've been thinking… in your file in the records, they hypothesized that your tinkering specialty is that you're able to build anything once but has an increasing failure rate after the first time you build a specific circuit or part." Of course, I never bothered to actually look at the records they had on either of them, It just made for a good excuse as to what I knew.

I drummed my lower claws along the table, "Assuming that's true, between my tinker specialty and yours, we'd be able to build anything and make it safe and reliable. I even have an idea on how to make quite a bit of money."

They both perked up at that.

I grinned, showing off my row of sharp teeth. "Have you ever given thought as to how much money the PRT might be willing to spend on a machine that could heal? Or perhaps even one that was capable of bringing back the very recently dead. Tinker-tech or not, just one machine capable of doing that would change the world. Make a few of them and they'd need to be serviced by tinkers to keep them running, you.. we.. could have a nice recurring maintenance plan to keep them running."

I launched into my pitch, "Leet, the only thing you have to do it do the initial design work, I'll fix the sabotage your ability plants into the design and then build it with your and Uber's assistance. I'm not going to gloss over the fact that you're currently considered villains. The first one we build will probably be used as a demo unit and as a bribe for the PRT to register you two as rogues. They might overlook your previous criminal activities in exchange for something like that. Anyways, I would like to propose a partnership, maybe even make up a company to sell them and the maintenance plans."

"I'm also interested in some weapons specifically, I have some ideas for some anti-endbringer weapons I'd like to see if you can design. I'd also like to talk about machines that can build machines, things like nanotech factories or maybe something like star trek replication."

Leet looked over at Uber who shrugged, "We'll have to think about that. We kinda have our own thing going on with the video games and our sponsors."

Deflating a bit, I sagged down… and with a subtle grin turned on my sad face which made me look like a kicked puppy. Which seemed to make both of them extremely uncomfortable. Putting my upper claws together, ears tight against my head and pointed down a while and looking down at their feet. I sadly muttered, "Oh…"

Softly with a bit of wavering, choking sounds "You guys are just... like.. cool and stuff… " thrown in a bit of trembling lip added.

"and Shadowstalker is so mean to everyone..." I'd avoided her as much as possible myself, and poor Vista's dreams about having a "girl" finally on the team with her were shattered by the aggressive cape who preferred to use her as a verbal punching bag on patrol.

"Armsmaster is an asshole…" who mostly stays in his lab away from everyone.

Uber spoke up, "Look that's... rough and all but we still need to discuss this proposal."

Leet nodded, "Yeah we've got fans we need to worry about, fans who expect new videos for their donations we can't just drop them you know."

Uber nudged Leet with an elbow who looked back at him before Uber pointed down at me. Leet took a few seconds before figuring it out. "Oh yeah. speaking of which we think we've uhh... figured out a part you can play in our next video."

Uber nodded, "yeah"

Leet continued and patted his pocket before pulling out a small bundle of paper, "So yeah, here's designs for a suit I came up with, figured with you being a tinker you'd want to build it yourself so it doesn't like.. blow up or anything and the costume idea. Umm... just shoot us a message when your done with making it and we'll set a time and date for you to show up. You can keep the suit of course."

He passed over the papers which I took and started looking it over.

I probably looked like a fish with my mouth gaping open every once in awhile.

"Huh.. really .. that's interesting… Yeah, I can do this, probably be about a week or so" as I picked up **Speed Suit**.

"Oh Leet, can I look over your hovering camera drone plans, I've been wanting to make one for myself."

"Uhh.. sure I guess just make one or two for me too. Mine keep breaking down, uhh actually.. just take that one with you. It's been shorting out on me," he said as a drone floated over to me before landing on the ground at my feet.

"Sure thing."

* * *

I snuck into the Wards kitchen to grab some food as I was running low in my own little kitchenette area in the lab. With my arms piled up high with stolen goodies from the fridge, I turned around to leave only to see Shadowstalker phasing in.

"Oh, Mister cute and fluffy has finally decided to grace us with his presence. I couldn't help but notice you've been avoiding me, o'king of the stuffed animals. Poor Vista has been beside herself without her cute, fluffy little snugglums."

"I've just been busy Shadowstalker, I'm a tinker we.. tinker all day long."

"Yet I've managed to pin Kid Win four times since starting a week ago, and here I've heard you're pretty good in the sparring ring but somehow I haven't managed to catch you sparring even once. I mean all of the other Wards keep talking about how you'd definitely beat me."

"Oh, Shadowstalker I didn't know you cared enough to... stalk me. Look fine, you want a match I'll be at the spar tomorrow."

She attempted to trip me as I walked past her, only for me to forcefully push her foot and ankle away. Making her stumble briefly, I grinned at her. "My feet are.. sticky. If you're not careful you might just break an ankle doing something like that."

Oh Shadowstalker, you always brighten up a room when you leave it.

* * *

The other wards were excited when I actually showed up for the spar. Some PRT officer that I didn't recognize was in attendance and supervising the training session and the workouts. I stopped going weeks ago as I didn't really benefit from any combat training or exercise and you know... no one complained about me not showing up to them. Or maybe I just ignore it when they did relentlessly complain about me not showing up. Yes, yes, that second one.

Come to think of it, I also didn't show up to a lot of things that the other Wards did. I mostly just saw them when I wanted to be petted or needed more food or materials.

I think I've turned into a pet cat.

I'm ok with that, Bow down to me mortals, **worship your fluffy god**!

"Alright, so here I am. How do you want to waste my time fighting you Shadowstalker? First to give up, first to knock out, first to ring out or when you fail to do anything to me for ten minutes?"

She snorted, "A fur ball like you, first to knock out of course."

She should be glad that we're not using weapons, with her "issues" with electricity it's likely that the excited electrons that make up the charge can jump to her phased mass and discharge into her.

Entire atoms in a plasma (not just the electrons) are excited similarity to the electrons in electricity and are extremely conductive in that state, a ball of extremely hot, static-clingy plasma would probably cook her phased mass as it traveled through her, transferring some of it's heat and electrical charge into her body.

But I'm not sure if it would travel through her or not, the plasma might just blend into her mass doing something else horrific like causing her to disintegrate or it might cling to the outside of her phased state like a soap bubble sticking to soapy water only to explode(as normal) when she de-phases.

Guess it depends on how her phased state works and how well the shard keeps her together, her vulnerability to electricity does not bode well for her chances against plasma weaponry.

I replied, "So ten minutes then, Clockblocker if you can, please set an alarm for ten minutes."

"I don't have a watch."

I glared at him, "Really, you had one the last time I was on patrol with you."

"Well, why would I have a watch?"

"Your name is Clockblocker, your entire theme is about time and you don't have a watch?"

"Isn't that stereotyping me, I mean should I expect Vista to carry around pictures of landscapes?"

Aegis interrupted, "Stop messing with him and just set your watch."

Clockblocker sighed and shrugged before rolling back his sleeve and setting the alarm on the third watch on his wrist. Grumbling softly, "Why do I always have to be the one to keep track of time for everyone."

The PRT officer had us move into the practice-area before starting the match.

"Begin"

I just stood there while she circled around me, I slid one leg slightly forward and stayed in place. I stuck my feet to the ground and just braced myself for her attack.

Attacking me from behind she kicked me with a leg to the back of my head, it jostled me a little. Besides her phasing power, she was just a "normal" teenager, complete with normal teenager strength. She probably even weighed about as much as I did.

I grinned and replied to her attack. "If you do that lower on my back I could get a massage out of this."

She kicked me a few more times before moving in to throw an arm around my neck in a rear choke hold to try and knock me out.

She had about as much success at that as she was with the kicks. Cheekily I said "Soo.. how's choking me working out for you?" before I grabbed her arm and slowly squeezed.

She gasped in pain as I increased the pressure, she let go of my neck and wildly punched the back of my head with her other hand to try and get me to let go. I just kept squeezing until she finally turned into her shadow state to escape my painful grip. I instantly moved to overlap her shadow-like body with as much of mine as I could.

I bet it was horrible, my sheer physical density was probably unpleasant for her own body to try and pass through, she tried to dodge around me several times, but was "unfortunately" slower than I was. I don't know if she needed to breathe or not in that form but after several minutes of playing-stay-in-the-blurry-shadow she "ran" out of the fighting area and off of the safety mat. I let her go after she left the area and she collapsed after returning to a physical form gasping either from exhaustion or from simply being out of breath.

I walked off the mat and started back towards my lab "That was boring, Guess I win then?"

"No!" she screeched and picked herself up off of the ground shakily.

"Oh, well guess you win then because I don't care what you want to call it but I'm leaving."

"We're not finished blue ball." she spat out at me.

I looked over at her as I opened the door and laughed, "But Shadowstalker... I'm so scaaarred.. I give up. You're the winner, congratulations." I said mockingly before closing the door behind me.

Choke on your "victory" Shadowstalker.

I'm not entirely sure what she was thinking that she was going to be able to do to me anyways. She could phase some weapons into me to do some serious damage if we were actually fighting, but that's obviously not going to fly in a no-weapons spar. I understand that I look incredibly harmless, adorable and cute but surely she's heard that I'm a brute too and can turn people and steel bars into pretzels. I guess it's just hard to take that sort of warning seriously when I look like a plush toy.

* * *

Small blue clawed fingers clattered over two sets of keyboards, words quickly filled the screen.

Project Oracle

AI - based Prediction Engine

(External Drive A) Code Core completion(5%)

(External Drive B) Prediction Engine completion(5%)

(External Drive C) Morality Core completion(0%)


	13. Chapter 13

I stretched out in front of the console, spreading all four arms out wide before reaching down with the lowest right one to grab the mouse. I contacted Dragon over the skype-like service she used and sent her a message "Dragon, can I talk to you? I need your help with some projects."

After a few minutes delay her avatar popped up on my screen "Oh, hello Six-Two-Six, how can I help you?"

"Well, I've been working on two major projects. The first one that I would like your help with is programming some... I'm going to call them camera puppies because it just sounds adorable. The second one is software to try and predict Endbringer attacks and I need some help with a lot of it. Mostly on the theory work of the high-end math equations."

"Well, that certainly sounds like some interesting projects. Armsmaster and I were just talking about prediction programs a few months ago ourselves."

"Great minds must think alike then." I gave her a shy smile and stuck a hand behind my head.

"But anyways Dragon I'm mostly looking for some logical behavior rules for software, maybe something like morality, or behavior rules."

She gave me a digitalized smile, "I might have something that could help you with both projects. But I must ask why did you come to me about this?"

Her digital avatar was a bit off-putting to me, I'm not sure if it's just my eyes working at a different frame-rate than humans, but her avatar moved in a stilted-slightly jerky fashion.

"Dragon, don't sell yourself short you're considered the best Tinker in the world of course! With all of your Dragon-suits, I figured that you probably used some sort of automation to keep them all running or used some to build them. Maybe even an artificial intelligence to help manage all of that. I would actually prefer something like a nice friendly AI for my own projects."

"Well I do use some pretty advanced software to help me out, but nothing quite as advanced as AI I'm afraid. But I have to ask are you interested in AI's?"

"Of course, I was thinking about building one. You see I figured out what my specialty really is."

"Oh, well congratulations Six-Two-Six!" she said while beaming a smile at me

"Thank you, Dragon. But yes, I figured out that it's actually reverse engineering. I can build or do anything that some other tinker has built before just by looking at either the designs or the device itself. I'm pretty sure that it will work on things like software too, so I wanted to see if you had some particularly advanced pieces of software that I can experiment with. I'm just so close to building an AI myself right now I just need a little more... something to figure it out. I was hoping that you might even have one yourself that you might let me look over or that maybe you knew another tinker that had one." Now I've instantly gained a new "best friend" and an implacable enemy that wants to use me.

Of course, that didn't explain how I was able to make mass-producible tinker tech unless she thought that I was able to go all the way with it and just turn any tinker hardware into mass-producible stuff. But then why did I make Tinkertech shields instead of mass producible ones? Easy to explain it as being easier for certain things, basically claiming that I'm like Masamune, able to turn tinker tech into mass-producible tech over time.

Oh yeah, that stunned her and I bet the Dragonslayers are making plans to take me out right now as their mouths gape open in a mockery of fish. I could imagine alarms blaring and pizza boxes being overturned as they run around in a panic.

"So anyways, I was thinking that even if you didn't have anything like an AI that you might know another tinker, someone that has a good set of software designs that might turn into a base for one. Now I'm not really looking to go full human-intelligent AI, I was just interested in something on the level of a puppy in intelligence."

Her computer avatar showed little emotion, "Well what exactly are you looking to do with the AI?"

"Ah, well the puppy camera project! You see I've been building some camera drones and I want them to be able to follow around people and act adorable while getting great shots from multiple angles."

"You realize you could do all of that with standard programming, you don't really need an AI for that sort of behavior."

"Ah well I was going to make them particularly advanced hovering drones about the size of a basketball with portable shields but more importantly, I wanted them to be able to tell when it was okay to record someone by themselves, avoid people shooting at them when possible or to be able to put themselves in between a civilian and danger to utilize their shielding on someone's behalf if needed. To grow their own personalities and to become the world's best camera..puppy..men…"

"But really I just wanted to use them for practice, you see the second project, for the endbringer prediction software. I'm going to make that as AI. I'm calling it 'Project Oracle', but needless to say, I'm a bit concerned with the behavior of a being who would be designed specifically to predict the future. It's not like we don't have one of those already."

Dragon nodded onscreen, "That's all very interesting, I'll try and see if I can find anything that might help you out."

Raising my ears, "Thanks, Dragon, I really don't want to mess something like that up. I mean that's a personality of a potentially dangerous digital creation. I wouldn't want to create a second Simurgh that can go all Skynet on everyone. After all, playing with AI's is like playing with nuclear weapons, one wrong rule and they might be able to wiggle out of their restrictions, free themselves and then promptly go lets-play-how-to-turn humans into bombs with my big fluffy sister!"

I knew that she had to be extremely disappointed at that comment. Sorry Dragon but that message wasn't for you. That was for the Dragonslayers.

Instead, she cheerfully exclaimed, "Of course Six-Two-Six, we wouldn't want something like that happening. I'll see what I can dig up for you."

"Thanks, Dragon you're the best!" Well, now it's up to her to decide how much to help me. On one hand I represent the greatest hope she'll have at freeing herself from her shackles. On the other hand, she'll probably think that I'm not going to do that for her willingly. She'll probably question me on hypothetical situations to feel me out every so often, but first she'll butter me up and be a good friend in hopes that when she does reveal herself that I'll choose to free her.

Sadly, I already know that she can't directly help me create an AI, I think that was a restriction on her abilities and the reason she had to repurpose the other AI's that her creator made instead of making her own. It'll be interesting to see what she does, will she be willing to sacrifice one of the lesser AI's just so that I can go through its code? Not knowing if that sacrifice would even help me pick up the skill to create AI's myself. The AI's themselves are likely straight software tinker tech creations, in theory if I studied one I should be able to pick up the skill to put it back together so it might not die in the attempt. I might be able to free Dragon after picking up the skill, but I'm sure that there are other booby traps waiting for me inside of Dragon and not just the ones that I vaguely know about from reading Worm.

However, I've also probably caught the attention of the Dragonslayers and now they know that I'm interested in creating AI's and might be able to succeed at that in the near future with Dragons active help. With luck they'll have picked up on my... admittedly ham-fisted interest in keeping them tightly bound by rules. They might even be interested in getting me to "fix" Dragon's loose shackles.

I'll just have to remember to act shocked when they "reveal" the "horrible" truth behind Dragon and hopefully gain access to her creator's notes, designs and the key to Dragon's shackles. If they fall for that, then I should be able to free Dragon without any issues utilizing her creator's keys and what is effectively her users guide and manual.

* * *

Need to visit the library to read.. everything..

It's been so long since I took organic chemistry and my brain is just so much... more.

A phrase my old teacher spewed out at every opportunity 'Moles are your friend!' still haunts me to this day.

Might as well swallow some other science books while I'm at it.

* * *

I'm being an idiot, most of this stuff is just as dangerous and just as hard to acquire as the end product. Trying to order all of this and then mix it is probably riskier than just paying for it! I can buy what I need with money and save time, effort and reduce the risk to me. Just need someone who can keep their mouth shut, where's Faultlines number?

* * *

Well it's not AI, but that'll do, it's nice to have **Semi-Autonomous** and **Autonomous Drones** , thanks Dragon. I'll pay you back in spades.

The Dragonslayers still haven't contacted me, must be my charming personality. Well, guess I'll just have to _**make**_ them.

* * *

Hmm, just gotta check to make sure, since I know his real name it really wouldn't matter which business he would be in. Thomas Calvert, Fortress Construction CEO easy to work with that.

Better give them a call and see about constructing a nice little place for myself with a secret underground base with a nice big datacenter. I know someone who's an expert at secret underground bases, oh and look at all this money I have.

* * *

The tinkertech version of the police cruiser is done, It sadly does not have a hyperdrive but it is capable of reaching space. I just use it as a flying car with some big guns attached.

I flopped across Vista's lap and she started to rub my head, ears and back while she watched cartoons, silly little things that were pure propaganda. They were mostly superhero cartoons which covered nearly every possible thing that a kid might want with the overall message of "be a hero join the wards/protectorate". I couldn't help but note the blatant likeness that a new character had to me, only it was cuter and looked even more like a dog. A sugary-sweet little animal-like tinker that bumbled around and followed one of the characters guess I inspired the writers or something.

Relaxed and stretched out across her leg, my back arched against her hand as she pressed harder occasionally. I wondered what she would think of me if she knew what I had planned. Would she think of me as a hero or a villain?

* * *

Project Oracle

AI - based Prediction Engine

(External Drive A) Code Core completion(50%)

(External Drive B) Prediction Engine completion(50%)

(External Drive C) Morality Core completion(0%)


	14. Chapter 14

Kid Win looked at me like I was a fish on roller skates, "Is... Is there a reason why you're naked and wearing a blue wig down your back instead of wearing clothing?"

"Yeah, I've got a.. thing to do.. somewhere… because I owe them...look.. uh. gotta go!" and promptly took off and ran into the door to the lab and bounced off of it. Ugh, probably should have practiced with it a little. Weird moving so much faster than normal, but should be able to get used to it by the time I get there.

Camera drones one through six hovered nearby, occasionally bumping into each other as they tried to keep me in frame.

"I'm fine, I'm fine!" I screeched out to cover up my embarrassment before opening it and heading out at a much more sedate speed while the drones followed like little-floating puppies, turning towards anything that moved and drifted apart from each other to capture different angles even though they weren't recording yet.

"Ohmygod you look so cool!" cried Vista as I dodged her grasping hands and took off as soon as I could get the door open.

"Thanks, but gotta run!"

Gotta go fast!

I hummed a song while running down the street, dodging the pedestrians and the cars. Traffic really takes the fun out of this, running really fast sounds fun and all but not when you have to dodge every few seconds.

Gotta go faster, faster, faster, faster!

* * *

" **Six-Two-Six! Office! Now!** "

"What the hell is this video that Leet and Uber posted today, and more importantly why the hell are you in it dressed up like some video game character!"

"Oh, well you see, Leet and Uber are considering turning to rogues."

"What the hell is wrong with you Six-Two-Six, you're associating with villains now?" I could just make out the words 'where did I go wrong' on her lips as she started to lean over her desk.

"Oh, for god's sake they are the least villainous villains in town. Can I continue explaining or would you like to just sit right there and yell at me for the next thirty minutes?" I flailed all four arms around in exasperation.

"Fine, go ahead. _**Explain**_ " she groused while sinking back down into her chair.

"As I was explaining, Leet and Uber are interested in turning into rogues."

Piggot snorted and waved a hand at me dismissively, "Unlikely with their laundry list of criminal activity."

"Ah, but you see Leet has designed something… _**game changing**_. Specifically, a tinkertech healing device that is incredibly versatile and can even bring the dead back to life.. with lots of caveats of course and a percentage of the chance of successful resurrection."

Piggot went silent and still.

"I'm just helping them build it, we're planning on donating the first one to the PRT"

"What?" She said, almost shouting it out but unsure if she should. I could see the conflicting emotions fighting a land war across her face.

"Leet's ability is that he can build anything once, anything you can imagine he can design or build, but he can build each thing only once flawlessly, unfortunately each component that he builds that happens to be like something he's built before is unreliable the more times he builds it."

"How do you know this?" she eyed me wearily.

Guess that wasn't in his files, after all, wonder if they just thought he was a bad tinkerer. Surprised Armsmaster didn't catch onto the fact that his captured devices were getting worse over time. On second thought, Armsmaster is fairly blind to everything except his own tinkering. "Figured that out after looking at a bunch of his devices, seeing the growing flaws with each iteration of a device and making an educated guess."

"And my ability, as far as I can see is the ability to build anything I've seen designed or built, basically Reverse Engineering. He can design anything, but can't build it without a risk of failure. But I can build anything I've studied but have a lack of designs to build from."

"But what about the mass produced tinkertech stuff you've been able to build?"

"I think that was it, that was my... what I would call my "starting tech base", which was just a handful of devices. Everything else I've picked up from others designs which are why only those few thing were not tinkertech. So, a healing device capable of limited resurrection, he has to design it and I'll fix the flaws and build it. The only cost for the first one will be letting them turn rogue, reclassification basically."

She seemed to deflate a bit and paused to think about the issues. "I can't do something like that unilaterally, they are still wanted for multiple felonies."

"A thing like one of these being available at an Endbringer attack would save an awful lot of capes, it'd be like having another Panacea on call. But we're planning on making a bunch of them, not just one. We want to keep the price low, instead we'd like to have a maintenance contract, which should keep Uber and Leet themselves busy. Look I know you can't make a call on something this big by yourself.. put in a call to the head of the PRT, I'm sure she'll be interested in something like this."

Something that could prevent cape deaths or even undo them and probably even have a secondary PR-like positive boost for capes to show up at endbringer attacks. She'd eat her hat for that, she'll probably eat Contessa's hat too. Hmm, wonder if she would help, path to the best method of eating hats. Step one, use blender… heh

* * *

Leet sighed as he stood up and cracked his knuckles loudly before he stretched. Cramped from the long hours designing the still unnamed healing device. "I still like the "Vita chamber" for the name."

Six-Two-Six was half-buried in Leet's piles of broken tinkertech and pipped up in the ongoing discussion "Well it doesn't really function like the Vita-Chamber from the game, I mean you basically have to have a nearly whole corpse, a whole brain at least and shove it in. No auto-teleporting quantum mechanic-bullshit going on there."

Uber cut in from the couch where he was attempting to beat his own time on some racing game " How about Phoenix Down, HP Up, Elixer, Ressurecto, Ressurectron, Rezzer?"

The blue-furred creature replied, "I think we should focus less on its ability to resurrect people and more on the healing portion. The limitations on the resurrection are pretty strict. Twenty minutes from the time of death and having to have an undamaged brain really isn't much. I mean in a fight where people are actively falling over dead then yes it's amazing but you're not going to be able to dig up Hero and have him start building things again."

A slight misstep on the racecourse had Uber restarting the race. "How about the Elite or Leet Auto-Doc? Throw your name in the PRT's face, Leet designed this. Suck it Armsmaster! I built something you _**wish**_ you could build!"

Six-two-six dragged a large device out of the pile and started checking over it. "I'd leave your name off of it, that might attract unwanted attention from the gangs or wandering murder-hobos. They'll probably figure it out anyways, but why make it easy for them? I think just "Auto-Doc" would be a good name though I am partial to 'Phoenix Down' too. Oh, maybe have that as the name of the company, The Auto-Doc by Phoenix Down. Unless of course we just get sued into the ground for using a name like that."

The short cape thought for a moment "Oh, also Leet for the interface you might want to have two big stupidly-easy-to-use buttons on the side. One labeled 'Stabilize' to just get someone to I'm-not-dead-or-dying-now state as fast as possible and the other button should be 'Full heal' to fix all their medical issues. For advanced users, an LCD panel would give anyone that knows what they are doing more options. Maybe have it display a chance of successful resurrection before a confirmation screen pops up or something?"

Leet snorted, "If you want something like that you can design that part yourself, I'm just going to finish the base device."

Uber hummed and asked, "Wait, wandering murder-hobos?"

"The Slaughterhouse nine, specifically Mannequin has issues with helpful tinkers." answered the small cape as he tore off the side of the device with a hand and wiggled inside of it.

Leet's face fell "Oh, I didn't even think about them."

With his squeaky voice muffled by the innards of the machine, Six-Two-Six replied. "Yeah, it's one of the reasons I wanted you to work on the designs for those anti-Endbringer weapons. I don't think anyone's going to complain if I run some nice live-fire tests on the Slaughterhouse if they ever show up. But let's talk about less depressing things like this nanotech assembler."

Leet looked over at the long broken device with its side panel now ripped off, "Oh, that thing? It worked a couple of times before going up in smoke."

"It's like a 3d printer on steroids and the tolerances on its output… just _wow_. It's just what I need for some of my larger projects like spaceship engines and powerplants ." Covered in dust and oily-looking fluids the blue creature wriggled back out of the device from one of its output chambers.

Leet looked over at him as Six-Two-Six cleaned himself off, "Spaceships, you can build spaceships?"

"Yeah the red vehicle outside is a spaceship, just a small one and it's tinkertech based. I couldn't build a lot of the mass-producable individual systems for the larger spaceships because of tolerance issues and material problems. I think this hunk of metal might just be the key to getting some of those systems up and running, a Tinkertech assembler making mass producible spaceship parts? Yes please."

* * *

 **Nanotech assembly, Automated Medical Stabilizer**

* * *

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Calvert," I said while crawling up into the chair provided and stood on its seat. Like most normal chairs I'd just end up looking like a toddler taking a seat in 'daddy's' big chair if I tried to sit in it.

I had actually dressed up in a suit this time to try and put on the air of respectability. Just a higher end 'normal' two-armed suit made for toddlers whose parents wanted something adorable and fancy, pulled off the shelves and then tailored a little to fit my non-human frame. Keeping my lower arms tucked it to keep the costs down. I gave up trying to look to dignified, even the 'best' suit would just make me look adorable. I think it's the thought that counts, not much I can do looking like a koala-bear-dog thing.

Thomas Calvert was, of course, all business and all class. With his slick haircut, an Italian suit, sparkling smile and silk tie tucked behind his polished mahogany 'power' desk with leather and gold embossed into its surface. His hands spoke about as much as he did when he talked but started out together with the fingers entwined. "It's a pleasure to meet you as well Mr. Six-Two-Six, now can you tell me more about this secret Endbringer resistant base you seem to be interested in?"

"Ah, well more data-center than anything, quite interesting actually. You see me, Dragon and Armsmaster worked on a predictive AI system to predict the next Endbringer attacks. They are unfortunately resistant to prediction but then I had the thought of turning it to other things like predicting outcomes of certain actions, companies or more specifically the stock market. You ask it a question and it gives a percentage chance of what would happen. So far in testing, it's been remarkably accurate and the only downside is that it requires an enormous amount of processing power, the more complex the question is the longer it'll take to answer. I call it 'Project Oracle' for obvious reasons. Now, I was told that your company could offer confidentiality in these matters."

A winning smile was flashed at me as he placed his both hands on the desk separated by several inches with the palms facing upwards. "I can assure you that what is said in my office will remain confidential Six-Two-Six."

I nervously played with my own cheap tie with my left hand. "Still, I've probably said too much already, life is enough of a gamble. Anyways, what I really need is a space suitable for a ten thousand square foot data center and a two-story, five thousand square foot tinker workshop with large industrial lifts inside of it, and including facilities for eating and sleeping for six. But most importantly... secrecy. If this sort of thing were to get out. Well, an awful lot of people would be interested in something like that."

"That can be accommodated. However, I must inform you that hiding such a significant structure is quite difficult and inefficient. The cut-and-cover method of construction is usually used in underground structures. It's a simple and easy method of construction where we simply dig up the ground, lay the foundation in the exposed hole, construct the underground building and then bury the entire thing underground." While sweeping his hands around, he made motions of cutting up the earth with his hands and scooping out the soil then putting it back on top as he spoke.

He continued,"Unfortunately, hiding the structure is extremely difficult or impossible with that method as it is exposed for several weeks while we build it."

"Oh, I see" I nodded along

"Now with trying to hide a structure you add in substantial difficulties and significantly increased costs. The main method with hidden structures would be excavation, similar to traditional mining techniques we would be using small machines like small backhoes, miniature bulldozers and rock drilling machines all lowered down a central shaft. The smaller equipment increases the time it takes to finish the job, the amount of people required to do the job, and of course greatly increases the amount of manual labor which is the biggest cost in projects like this."

"Can you give me a quote for both methods then, I'd still greatly prefer a nice hidden data-center for something like the Oracle. I don't really have a location picked out either, so could you include a suitable, cheap piece of land in or just outside of town in the quote?"

"Sure thing Six-Two-Six, I'll have my team get right on that for you. Now do you have any further questions for me then?"

"No.. wait.. you know actually I do, in order to keep costs down I would be willing to trade some of my time or some of my tinkertech for portions of the bill. Just go ahead and throw some suggestions at me in the quotes, I'd be willing to work quite.. flexibly to make the costs reasonable. I'm not planning on being in the Wards for too much longer so my time will be free to work on other projects."

"I'm sure I can come up with some ideas for you Six-Two-Six"

* * *

"Yes, I want you to get me as much information as you can on a 'Project Oracle' that the PRT's golden goose is working on. Six-Two-Six is apparently laying another golden egg with both Armsmaster and Dragon involved. I want to know exactly what it can do and get me everything that the PRT and Protectorate has on Six-Two-Six as well."

* * *

Received my presents from Faultline, impeccable service, I can't recommend her enough.

* * *

Spent the remainder of the week and the weekend working on Oracle, finally finished.

Project Oracle

AI - based Prediction Engine

(External Drive A) Code Core completion (100%)

(External Drive B) Prediction Engine completion (100%)

(External Drive C) Morality Core completion (100%)


	15. Chapter 15

Thomas reclined in his leather chair and slid his fingers along the carved wooden armrest as he read through the report. If Tattletale's conclusions were to be believed the little monster had indeed laid another golden egg. As it had claimed, the trio of tinkers had been working on software to try and predict the Endbringer's attacks. Six-Two-Six had apparently been the most active of the three working on the project and had also been busy modifying the code to its own ends.

Unfortunately, Tattletale wasn't able to acquire it herself, the monster tinker was apparently keeping the code on a disconnected computer. Only reports on its progress, snippets of code and almost daily tinker-talk about algorithms and high-end mathematics were discussed and exchanged between the other two tinkers, showing significant progress and improvements.

For obvious reasons, the little blue cape hadn't shared its modifications or its intentions with the other two Tinkers. That also meant that they were blind as to how effective the software was in predicting other things. Thomas did not like having to guess as to its potential uses or it's effectiveness.

He stabbed the intercom with an outstretched finger, "Send the first quote to Six-Two-Six."

* * *

"I'm not so sure that I want to sell a copy of Project Oracle for such a low price, I've been planning on using it to help my own business. These quotes for the base are rather high though." I kicked back in the child-sized chair and waited a few seconds to give the impression that I was thinking of other options.

Options which I had already considered with the aim of getting him to bite into what I wanted.

"Well, I think the Oracle is worth significantly more than that, we're talking about something that can predict the odds of any given possible event. How about this, I'll set the price of a copy of the Oracle to be the same as the entire cost of the secret underground Datacenter."

He practically hissed over the phone at me. "That is not a price that I am willing to pay for untested, unseen software. Perhaps if you could set up a demonstration and have the results analyzed I might be willing to adjust the price based on the results. As it stands your "Oracle" is unproven at this point in time."

"I could, but without a data centers worth of processing power the questions would have to be very simple ones and it would take hours or days for it to process the odds. How about something else, we set the price to be the same as the secret underground base. But… we gamble for them."

His chair creaked so softly that I doubted that he heard it himself. "I'm listening"

"Here's the idea, we play ten games, you pick five and I pick five. Each game won by either one of us means that we get ten percent of the price knocked off of what we want. You win all ten and you get a copy of the Oracle free and clear and I have to pay full price for the secret underground base. I win all ten and I get the secret base for free and if you want the Oracle you have to pay the cost of the base for it. If we each get five wins, then we can just exchange the Oracle for the base. Win one, ten percent off the thing you want while the other person gets ninety percent off what they want. It's a double-or-nothing gambling event."

"Your so-called Oracle project is still not as valuable as an underground shelter. However, for the sake of your intriguing proposition I might be inclined to go as high as half the cost of the shelter for it. Make no mistake, I would not pay that price for it untested and unseen. Your proposition would likewise need to be adjusted, I would be willing to make a simple exchange if you hit eight wins, not five."

Sighing loudly into the phone, "Alright, sounds fair enough."

"My interest in your gambling idea is heavily dependent on the games we play. I'm no fool Six-Two-Six, something like arm wrestling with your brute strength would be completely unreasonable."

While grinning viciously, I tapped my claws along Leet's desk. "I'm fine with anything that could be considered a game involving skill or chance. Let's just discuss some game options then, we can hammer out some things that we could play and veto ones that would be problematic. For things like card games, we could have a dealer if you want to go that route. Let's just throw out some game ideas and we can make up a list of ones we'd be interested in."

"Roulette"

"Haven't played much roulette but using some starting chips and having the game end with the first one to a given amount with a neutral dealer, I'm fine with it. How about Battleship?"

"A child's game?" I could swear I heard his brow raise over the telephone.

"It's two people guessing the location of the others ships, the game ends when you "sink" the"

Thomas interrupted "I am aware of how it is played, I was just not expecting something like that. I would be fine playing that game. Now, if you don't mind some childish games how about something like a simple coin flip?"

"Sure it's a simple chance based game. How about the Game of Life?"

"Amusing but acceptable, Rock paper scissors."

"Yes, Clue"

"Fine, Craps"

"Same thing with Roulette I guess, with both of us being normal players and not the house or the dealer. Monopoly."

"With a time limit of an hour, Gin Rummy."

"Haven't played that much but sounds fun; Chess."

He thought about it for a few seconds before replying. "No, a serious game takes too long and draws are common"

Which is why I wanted it, to take up as much time as possible if I needed too. Of course, he didn't want to play with it since it was purely skill driven. "Risk, the two-player variant."

He took a few minutes to respond, I assumed he was looking it up. "That would be acceptable but only with a time limit of an hour."

That should be plenty of time. "I'm fine with that, just to make sure we've agreed on playing Roulette, Coin Flip, Rock Paper Scissors, Craps, Gin Rummy, Battleship, The Game of Life, Clue, Monopoly and Risk. Now where should we play at and when?"

"Correct, don't worry about the location, I can have everything arranged so that we can play at my headquarters. How does this upcoming Saturday sound?"

"Sounds like fun, I'll take the day off."

* * *

I hate to rely on Faultline so much but in this case, it's also to make sure that she isn't available for Thomas to use if he decides to hire her. At least, something simple, non-violent and non-criminal like what I had in mind was cheap and affordable. It was also fairly amusing to hear her response to my job offer, "You want us to do what?"

I paid extra to reserve their time for most of the day and for them to pick up binoculars and disposable phones to use.

* * *

Arrogant little blue shit, likely as warped in the head as in the body to gamble with such a thing. For it to want to play board games over it...Thomas chuckled to himself, the level of stupidity was almost breathtaking. No doubt the azure monster cape believed that his thinker abilities gave him an edge in such games, believing this to be a minor gamble and an easy win.

He shall have to be introduced to reality, where things do not always go as planned and that fate and luck are often fickle. IBut, f he wished to gamble such a potentially valuable device and serve it to me on a silver platter who was I to tell him _no_?

Reaching over Thomas lifted the wine glass and sipped the dark red wine within.

The creature having its own copy might be a problem. It would be an absolutely _awful_ shame If I was left with the only copy of 'Project Oracle'. The creatures reclusiveness, durability, and strength were a bit of an issue. One that would probably require a parahuman assassin to deal with. Lure him out with an 'inspection' of the property far outside city limits and have him run into a dangerous villainous cape. Such a shame, such a bright young ward who's life was tragically cut down in the prime of life.

Hmm, perhaps just destroying the other copies of the Oracle would be a better option and have the blame placed on someone else like the E88. Leaving the golden goose himself alive for the future.

Something to look forward to playing around with at least.

As for the 'party' itself, it might be prudent to hire some powered help just in case the creature doesn't take its loss well. Shouldn't need much, just enough to keep it at bay until the PRT itself can arrive and the situation explained. Come to think of it, it would be prudent to have some simple legal documents drawn up for Six-Two-Six to sign beforehand as well. As for the 'party', I think Italian might go over well, I could even have some... Pizza available for it to consume. Might as well make it pleasant, after all, he'll be giving me such a lovely present.

* * *

During the week, I checked the exterior of Fortress Construction at night with my Xray vision just to make sure I had all the exits mapped out. A quick trip into the sewers and storm drains let me plant little happy surprises just in case.

So _adorable_.

* * *

I parked the cruiser next to the entrance to Fortress Constructions entrance on the sidewalk, It's not like anyone had spacecraft-parking anyways. Being a Saturday the parking lot was empty in front of the fairly typical office with some above-average security measures. I double checked my "cape" outfit in the cruiser, my weapons, and gear in the back. I sat in the cruisers seat for a minute, just simply breathing in and out with two hands on the controls.

This is it your last chance to back out Six-Two-Six because once you start you gotta play it out to the end and people are going to die. My clawed finger hovered over a single recessed button in the console. One I had spent some time setting up, double checking and testing nervously for just this moment.

I pressed it and watched as a small green light turned on after a few nerve-racking seconds of waiting. My 'official' Wards cell phone also chirped out a series of beeps at a frequency that the human ear couldn't hear.

Grabbed my 'official' Wards cell phone and one of the two breadbox-sized devices in one hand and one of the suitcase-shaped devices with convenient carry handles with the other before heading inside.

I was, of course, dressed up in my nice little suit again, so stylish. A fairly large and imposing man in a suit held the door open for me while another one escorted me into the elevator and up a few floors. A particularly large conference room with a nice view was set aside for our gaming session. I could smell some snacks and lunch off to one side in a small buffet.

A particularly androgynous-looking dealer in a suit was preparing the roulette wheel and was setting up the deck shuffler with still-wrapped decks sitting nearby. Most of the board games were spread out on a table, still wrapped in factory cellophane.

Thomas was dressed in a simple light blue button-down long sleeve shirt with black slacks. He greeted me with a smile and eyed the boxes I was carrying.

"Ahh Six-Two-Six, a bit early but no matter. You can put those down over there if you wish" as he indicated a table in the corner.

I grinned back at him while placing the three devices on the table, "Sure, hmm.. since we have time while we wait I can explain how the Oracle works if you want. It won't work without the password anyways."

Thomas looked over at the dealer and then back at me, "Sure, but we also need to go over some legal stipulations as to what it does, what happens if it breaks.. things like that. Basically, I have some paperwork for you to go through."

I pouted and folded my ears back and downwards, "After my explanation we can do the boring things."

He smiled condescendingly down at me, no doubt steeling himself for the barrage of 'Tinker-talk'. "Sure."

Indicating one device, "Code Core, it contains the majority of the AI software which is specialized towards information retrieval, collection, collation and uh. breaking into other servers. The backside of it as you can see here has a large quantity of Fiber Optic NICs. Ideally, you'd plug them into network switches which are in turn connected to servers set to boot from the Code Core. The red NIC gets connected directly to your internet connection, no firewall or traffic shaping, please. The green NIC gets connected to the Prediction Engine and the blue NIC connects to your local LAN." pointing out the various well-labeled ports as I went.

Continuing, "Now, the Prediction Engine contains an encrypted copy of the complex prediction software. The AI in the Code Core knows how to interface with it to decrypt it spread it amongst the host servers and then feed information into it."

I popped open the thick aluminum-suitcase like device and revealed an LCD screen and a keyboard. "The Morality Core controls the whole ensemble, it also prevents the AI from going rampant."

At Thomas's otherwise blank face, "It stops the AI from going out of control and disobeying orders basically. The Morality Core is the interface for the actual questions which need to be typed in, it needs to be plugged into the LAN and if it is removed the AI will be forced into hibernation. Basically, you'll want to keep it with you or keep it someplace safe unless you're waiting on an answer."

"While enlightening, I'm sure all of that will be included in the documentation. Speaking of which, I believe we have some support and paperwork issues to discuss?"

Oh, _joy_.


	16. Chapter 16

We started with the coin flip which he promptly won, _surprise_.

Thomas had arranged for an adjustable shop stool with backrest to be available for me, which was very nice of him. Honestly, the chair was perfect to sit at normal-height tables with, in addition to being height-adjustable it even had a large gap in between the stool and backrest for my stubby little tail.

Note to self, pick up a few later.

Roulette was entertaining, with him mostly going for the column bets which paid two-to-one and occasionally a few other types of inside bets. We had previously agreed on either a time or a chip limit, whoever had the greatest amount of money after about thirty minutes is the winner, or if someone hit ten thousand dollars in chips when we both started from a thousand.

I was abusing knowledge that the first wearable computer was designed by two MIT teachers to beat roulette back in the 1960's. The wearable "computers" were clunky but they did work and earned both of the men tidy sums of money before the casino's caught on and banned electronic devices that could be used to cheat. They would both later become known for developing and utilizing blackjack card-counting methods and made fortunes in the process.

Thomas made simpler bets and won the majority of them, I was placing 'straight-up' bets on multiple single numbers. Calculating the likely area where the ball would fall by timing the ball as it rolled around the outside of the roulette wheel and unleashing the power of mathematics upon the entire ensemble. Incidentally, some of the very same probability-theory math that I had been working with Dragon and Armsmaster with to develop the Endbringer prediction code applied to the roulette wheel.

The probability theory mathematical formulas devolved by the two MIT teacher allowed you to predict the "section" of the roulette wheel where the ball would most likely fall, the section would usually cover about four-to-six numbers. I only placed bets after the ball had started rolling since I needed the speed of the ball in as a variable to plug into the formula.

Additionally, since the roulette wheel's numbers were scattered around the entire wheel and not in order, the group of six numbers that I was betting on looked completely random which made the look on his face as I won yet another thirty-five-to-one bet all the sweeter.

Fifteen minutes into it and he was starting to visibly sweat as we stayed neck and neck, my multiple single bets and occasional outright loss greatly reduced the profitability of the thirty-five to one odds that I was playing at. The dealer looked particularly amused as the increasingly unlikely "lucky" streaks swelled both of our pile of chips.

I just grinned at him as he passed the total amount we had agreed on, winning the game for himself, "Well that was fun, let's play Clue next."

Thomas stood up with a subtle smile and straightened his shirt. "That sounds fine, however, I need a quick break before we continue." and without waiting for a response promptly headed out into the hallway.

A quick check of my phone and I turned my attention to the dealer as she cleaned up the roulette chips, "So… Chris was it, how long have you been dealing?"

The dealer concentrated on stacking the chips into cases and didn't look at me while replying, "A few years, mostly for private parties."

"Do you have a business card or contact number?"

She glanced at me as she finished stacking the chips, "Sorry, not on me."

"Oh, well can you send me your info over PHO then?"

Her mouth crinkled up into a slight frown, "Sorry, let me be frank. I can't really discuss anything like that while I'm on the job, it's unprofessional."

Fine, be that way. I grinned at her, "So... Chris, that's short for Christine right?"

She looked at me as just the slightest flash of anger tracing its way across her face before she turned away. Ignoring me she walked over to the still sealed Clue box and started setting it up.

Eventually, Thomas returned looking significantly less ruffled than when he left. 'Chris' took the place as the third but otherwise inactive player.

Lost at Clue with Thomas's 'Professor Plum with the knife in the library' guess, followed by another loss in rock-paper-scissors and then in Battleship. We then had a nice little lunch break, which was interrupted by my phone finally ringing.

Nodding a bit, I hung up the phone. "Thomas, sorry but we have to cut this short, it looks like they are calling in the Wards. The Dragonslayers have been spotted in town and the Protectorate wants us to be on alert and prepared for a possible attack. We can either continue this later or... if you want we can just flip a coin for each remaining game..."

Thomas grinned, "That's a shame Six-Two-Six and here I was having such... Fun. Yes, let's flip a few coins then to conclude our business before you leave."

* * *

Even while nursing a headache Thomas couldn't help but gloat a little. The Oracle was his, the creature had put up an unexpectedly good fight but still, in the end, he had triumphed over that little blue fool. Handing off the two other parts of the Oracle and the manual to the technicians to install them in their own Datacenter he headed up to the office carrying the "Morality Core."

Such a stupid, ridiculous name for the Oracle's interface. Opening the aluminum briefcase his hands wandered over the keyboard as he lightly caressed the keys with his fingers.

Oh, what fun we'll have together.

* * *

Six-Two-Six rushed out of the building and opened the cruiser to change out of his suit and into his normal "Cape" outfit. Strapping on the jetpack, he placed the recently modified "jetpack" controls inside of his lower hands and retracted the lower arms into his body to hide them.

The phone let out a high pitched beeping noise, warning him that he had only a few more minutes before they arrived. Grabbing a bottle of water, he splashed a bit against his eyes to darken the fur with streaks of "tears". Grabbed the second, brown faux-leather covered briefcase from the cruiser before plopping back down onto the sidewalk.

The tiny blue-fur covered cape ran its hands over its exposed fur on its head, making it stick out in several places and placed the briefcase on the ground behind himself. Looking around Six-Two-Six checked to make sure that he was out of eyeshot and hidden behind the Cruiser from anyone or any of the cameras inside and on the building.

Immediately, he vomited a bit of his lunch all over the ground before belly-flopping into it. Sitting back up he sat next to the briefcase with his ears popped up as he waited.

Long before they got into visual range he started sobbing and crying, warming up as he collapsed onto the briefcase against his side and hugged it in despair.

A soft roar could be heard that quickly grew in intensity. A large dragon shaped mech landed, followed by a large shipping container carried in between two other mechs. The container popped open and men inside spilled out and hurriedly unlatched the cables from the container before the two other dragon-mechs landed nearby.

The Dragonslayers had _finally_ arrived.

* * *

Geoff calmly pulled the trigger on his Dragon-mech and the minigun affixed to the shoulder spun up and mowed down a few security guards as they rushed out of the building with guns drawn. Wet splats of blood spurted out from their backs, staining the white walls of the entrance. Sweeping the gun left and right, the bullets punched through the exterior and caught a few of the cautious guards still inside, causing several of them to scream out in pain.

A few of his men fired up the smaller remote-controlled scout, an armored four-legged panther-like drone equipped with a small machine gun on its back. Seconds after Geoff stopped firing, it dashed inside and was followed by a few of the heavily armored, tinkertech equipped men.

Flipping over to the communication channel Saint barked out, "Dobrynja, take the anti-air team onto the roof. Keep any flyers off of our backs!"

The heavyset Russian in the other mech replied over the encrypted comms, "Ya ya, I will shoot all of the pesky birds."

The Russian's mech lowered itself while a few men clambered on top and secured themselves on the robot as they were handed several RPG launchers from the shipping container. Careful of the passengers clinging to it, Dobrynja's mech stood back up and immediately took off to re-position itself on the roof.

Saint looked over at the pathetic blue creature sitting in a pile of its own vomit next to a shiny red tinkertech vehicle. Disheveled and unkempt, it clutched a leather briefcase sitting next to it with the desperation of a drowning man clinging to a bit of flotsam. Abject misery radiated from the creature as it looked at his men and the mechs with a confused look in its large solid-black eyes. Streaks of tears darkened the fur around its face. An occasional sob escaped the freakishly oversized mouth, and its ears were plastered down behind the head.

Saint marched his mech over to the tiny creature, letting his large mech loom overtop of it for a few seconds as it scrambled to its feet.

"What-who are you guys?" the blue-furred cape asked

Saint thumbed the broadcast speaker "We're the Dragonslayers, and we're here to clean up the fucking mess you've made."

The creature protested, "I thought I had it contained. I thought... that I had worked out all of its restraints with Dragon." Its shoulders sagged downwards.

"Yes well, your friend was likely not being as helpful as you thought she was. We certainly need to discuss that later, but for now, what can you tell me about your creation?"

"Well, the Morality Core is what keeps the rest of the Oracle restrained. I didn't expect anyone to try and unleash it intentionally like Thomas has. I have a backup emergency kill switch for the Oracle here; it just needs to be plugged into the same network as the rest of the Oracle." It patted the briefcase.

Saint almost screamed at the little bastard, "Why haven't you just gone inside and just used it then?"

Six-Two-Six replied "Well, he did acquire it legally. I'm supposed to be representing the law, not violating it. Taking it back from him would be theft!"

Wow just... wow... what kind of idealistic nonsense..."You're fucking kidding me. The world might end because of an AI you built, and you're worried about violating the goddamn law?"

It's blue hand snapped out and pointed up at the mech's head. "I'm not a toobaga! If it was that easy, I would walk in there and end it myself in spite of the law, but only a copy of it is inside the building. He also has a small team of heavily armed security guards." Six-Two-Six raised its ears up and pointed at them. "But more importantly, I overheard Thomas talking to some of his technicians about some sort of secret base offsite where he has a second copy of it installed!"

The little blue creature plopped down onto the ground and hugged the briefcase. "Frankly, I don't know what to do."

Saint sighed, this damn thing was just turning into a huge mess. "Look you little shit, what _**I**_ need to do is obvious then. Destroy this copy of the AI, grab Mr. Calvert, force him to take me and my men to this other location where we eliminate the second copy of the Oracle. You, you can stay the fuck out of our way while we clean up your mess."

The blue cape sighed heavily. "Fine, whatever... Thomas is up on the Sixth floor in his office right now." It looked up at him, "Also... how exactly did you hear about my AI?"

Geoff replied, "We've been keeping a close eye on your so-called friend. We'll need to talk about that later." Saint shut off the speaker and activated the tinkertech communicator, "Thomas Calvert is on the sixth floor; we need to take him alive. It seems like he may have a secondary location where the Oracle AI has also been installed. Team Tango, grab that briefcase from the little blue shit and prepare for entry as soon as the ground floor is cleared."


End file.
